What just happened? Texas Instruments announced it will build 300mm wafer fabrication plants in Sherman, Texas, to tackle the increasing demand for semiconductors worldwide. Construction of the first two plants will start in 2022, with plans to establish a total of four plants over time.

Texas Instruments' new plants will create many job opportunities and expand the company's chip manufacturing operations in the US, increasing its 300mm wafer production. If Texas Instruments ends up filling all four slots for fabs, the semiconductor manufacturer expects to create 3,000 direct jobs and invest about $30 billion.

The construction of these plants comes as an answer to the ever-increasing demand for semiconductors worldwide, which led to the ongoing global chip shortage that's ravaging the technology and automotive industries. However, the first fabs should only come online in 2025, so their products won't help much with the current problem but should prevent situations like this in the future.

"TI's future analog and embedded processing 300-mm fabs at the Sherman site are part of our long-term capacity planning to continue to strengthen our manufacturing and technology competitive advantage and support our customers' demand in the coming decades," said Rich Templeton, chairman, president and CEO at TI. "Our commitment to North Texas spans more than 90 years, and this decision is a testament to our strong partnership and investment in the Sherman community."

Apart from the upcoming plants, Texas Instruments already has a DMOS6 300mm fab in Dallas, Texas, and two 300mm fabs in Richardson, Texas: the RFAB1 and the almost complete RFAB2. The latter is expected to start production in the second half of 2022.

Besides the Texas fabs, TI also recently acquired Micron's former 3D XPoint fab (LFAB) in Lehi, Utah, for $900 million. This plant should begin production in early 2023.

Alongside Texas Instruments, Samsung is also planning to build a $17 billion semiconductor wafer fabrication plant in Texas. This plant, however, is supposedly targeted at manufacturing 5nm wafers.