Avant wins $4.83M Texas grant
- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said April 23 that Avant Technology won a $4.83 million Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund grant to expand its manufacturing facility in Pharr, with 250 jobs projected. - State officials said the Pharr project includes more than $20 million in capital investment, while Avant said the expansion will add semiconductor assembly capacity for memory and storage products. - The award adds Rio Grande Valley manufacturing to Texas’ post-2023 chip push, which the state ties to its Texas CHIPS Act and semiconductor office. (gov.texas.gov)
Texas awarded Avant Technology a $4.83 million grant on April 23 to expand the company’s semiconductor manufacturing facility in Pharr. (gov.texas.gov) Gov. Greg Abbott said the money comes from the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund, and the Pharr project is expected to create 250 jobs. The governor’s office said the expansion also represents more than $20 million in capital investment. (gov.texas.gov) (kxan.com) Avant is based in Pflugerville, and its Pharr site makes semiconductor assemblies including solid-state drives and memory modules. Regional business coverage said the added capacity is aimed at automotive and industrial markets. (rgvbusinessjournal.com) (bizjournals.com) The state created the fund after lawmakers passed the Texas CHIPS Act in 2023. Texas says the program is meant to back semiconductor research, design and manufacturing inside the state. (gov.texas.gov) (gasworld.com) That makes this Pharr award part of a broader Texas effort to spread chip investment beyond the Austin area and into the Rio Grande Valley. Abbott said the jobs would be “high-skilled” and linked the project to workforce training. (gov.texas.gov) A separate piece of that workforce buildout has been playing out in Central Texas. Samsung Austin Semiconductor said on April 14 that it had added $1 million in 2025 to its University of Texas at Austin partnership for research, innovation and workforce development. (semiconductor.samsung.com) Samsung said earlier donations helped launch UT’s Master of Science in Engineering in Semiconductor Science and Engineering. UT said in 2023 that the partnership would support recruiting, lab upgrades and student training tied to semiconductor manufacturing. (semiconductor.samsung.com) (news.utexas.edu) Avant’s grant is smaller than the headline chip projects tied to Samsung and other giants, but it shows Texas using state money on suppliers and assembly work as well as megafabs. In Pharr, that means a local factory expansion backed by state cash, with hiring now central to the pitch. (gov.texas.gov) (semiconductor.samsung.com)
