Dutch chip equipment manufacturer ASM International has announced it plans to invest €300 million ($324 million) over a five-year period to expand its R&D efforts in Arizona.
The company already employs 800 people in the state and said the new 20-acre facility, set to be located in Scottsdale, will create an additional 500 jobs in software engineering and research and development.
“ASM’s facility in Arizona has always been a key center for the development of leading technologies that enabled many breakthroughs in the global semiconductor industry,” said Benjamin Loh, CEO of ASM. “The investment in our new facility in Scottsdale will substantially expand our research and development activities, further strengthening Arizona as a hub for top-notch semiconductor innovation.”
The new site will be more than double the size of its current facility in Phoenix and will house ASM’s R&D efforts, in addition to a number of the company’s corporate functions, including supply chain, manufacturing engineering, a Global Training Center, and the Global Software Team.
ASM is the biggest seller of Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) tools, used by chipmakers to form ultra-thin layers of material on silicon wafers.
