Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, in Silicon Valley. It is the world’s largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is the developer of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most personal computers (PCs). Recently Intel announced that it will invest $600 million in Israel to expand its Research & Development(R&D) and also informed that they are spending $10 billion on new chip plant. The announcement was made after Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger visited Israel for one day, the visit was a part of European tour which also included Germany and Belgium.
In recent years Intel has bought 3 Israel companies they are – Mobileye in 2017 for more than $15 billion, artificial intelligence chipmaker Habana in 2019 for $2 billion and Moovit in a year for $1 billion. Furthermore, Intel is investing $400 million to turn its Mobileye unit which is headquartered in Jerusalem into R&D campus for developing self driving car technologies. Another $200 million will be invested in building R&D centre, which is called IDC12. They want to built the centre in northern port of city of Haifa located next to its current development centre. It is said that “mega chip design” facility will have capacity of 6,000 employees. Gelsinger said that there is opportunity for “vibrant future of Intel and Israel for decades to come.” In early 2019 Israel’s Finance Ministry said Intel would get $ 1 billion grant to build $11 billion chip plant, though at that time Intel didn’t confirm the amount. Moreover, Intel said that investment would be $10 billion and the first phase of construction has begun. Its current Fab 28 plant at company’s Kiryat Gat site produces 10 nanometre(nm) chips. Though, Intel is yet to disclose whether the new plant will produce the smaller chips, which increases the efficiency but in March it said it was building that two 7 nanometre(nm) chip plants in Arizona for around $20 billion. Intel is the largest employer of Israel’s high tech industry with nearly 14,000 workers. Intel Israel’s export expanded to record from $6.6 billion in 2019 to $8 billion in 2020, with 14% of total high tech exports and 2% of Israel’s GDP.
