Groundbreaking begins on TSMC's Arizona advanced‑packaging campus, $165B investment

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has started building an advanced chip-packaging plant in Phoenix, aiming to bring the final assembly step for AI chips to Arizona before 2029. (money.usnews.com) At a conference in Santa Clara on April 22, Kevin Zhang, TSMC’s deputy co-chief operations officer, said the company is building CoWoS and 3D integrated-circuit capacity at the Arizona site. Reuters reported construction had already begun. (money.usnews.com) Packaging is the stage where separate pieces of silicon are combined into one finished chip module, a step that has become a bottleneck for artificial-intelligence processors from companies such as Nvidia. Reuters said many chips made in Arizona still have to be sent back to Taiwan for that work. (money.usnews.com) TSMC’s own Arizona page now says the Phoenix project has grown from a $12 billion fab announced in 2020 to a $165 billion campus. The company says the site is planned to include six wafer fabs, two advanced-packaging facilities and an R&D center. (tsmc.com) That $165 billion figure was not the original Arizona plan. TSMC announced on March 4, 2025 that it intended to add $100 billion to its existing $65 billion U.S. investment, including three more fabs, two packaging facilities and a major research center. (tsmc.com) The first Arizona fab entered high-volume production in the fourth quarter of 2024 on TSMC’s N4 process, according to the company. TSMC says the second fab is targeting volume production in the second half of 2027, while the third broke ground in April 2025 and is slated for N2 and A16 technologies. (tsmc.com) The packaging move is aimed at customers that already buy Arizona-made chips. Reuters named Apple and Nvidia as companies sourcing chips from TSMC’s Arizona factory, even as final packaging has remained concentrated in Taiwan. (money.usnews.com) (tsmc.com) Amkor Technology is also part of the Arizona packaging picture. Reuters reported that Amkor said last year it was working with Apple and Nvidia on a separate packaging factory in Arizona targeted for mid-2027 construction completion and early-2028 production, ahead of TSMC’s own 2029 goal. (money.usnews.com) TSMC says its Arizona operation already employs more than 3,000 people on 1,100 acres. The company calls the broader Phoenix buildout the largest foreign direct investment in a greenfield project in American history. (tsmc.com 1) (tsmc.com 2) The practical change is simple: chips made in Arizona are supposed to spend less time crossing the Pacific before they become finished products. TSMC’s target is to have that packaging capability in place before 2029. (money.usnews.com)