Micron sees new Singapore plant as key in plan to meet rising demand for AI-enabling chips
Production at the plant starts in 2026
[SINGAPORE] A new US$7 billion (S$8.9 billion) plant being built in Singapore will underpin Micron Technology’s plans to produce advanced semiconductors needed for artificial intelligence (AI) applications.
Announced earlier this year, the facility in Woodlands will start production in 2026 and will initially create 1,400 jobs, with that increasing to around 3,000 in later years.
The new Singapore plant will allow the American chipmaking giant to increase its output of what are known as high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, according to Sumit Sadana, its executive vice-president and chief business officer.
The chips contain several layers that make a cube able to store and process large amounts of data faster while consuming a lot less power than conventional chips.
They enable graphics processing units and other accelerators made by companies such as Nvidia and AMD to process generative AI workloads at data centres.
The HBM market is worth about US$35 billion, and Micron expects that it will approach US$100 billion by 2030.
BT in your inbox
Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.
Sadana said in an online briefing on Jul 2: “That’s a massive amount of growth in the HBM market, and in order to meet the growth expectations that we have, we have been making plans for HBM capacity expansion.”
Micron is expanding its existing HBM output in Taiwan, but that capacity is likely to be used up quite quickly, so it will need more facilities to meet the expected demand in the coming years.
“We are rapidly going to run out of space in our facility in Taiwan. So, the Singapore facility will be very important to continue our HBM growth,” said Sadana.
“We are super excited about the AI opportunity, and Singapore will certainly have a strong role to play in a lot of the AI-based innovation that we are doing.”
Micron has also announced plans to start producing HBM chips in the United States; however, the Singapore plant will be up and running by the time production there kicks off.
The firm, the top memory-chip maker in the US, unveiled a “strategic reorganisation” of its business units in April designed to capitalise on the growth driven by AI, from data centres to devices such as computers and mobile phones.
The reorganisation will make the company structure more market-focused, rather than product-focused.
The new four business units will include a cloud memory business unit focused on large hyperscale cloud customers and HBMs for data centre customers.
There will be a separate mobile and client business unit, and one for automotive, industrial and consumer segments.
“This new structure will increase our resources towards data centres and allow us to have the end-to-end capability to serve AI in all segments,” said Sadana.
He said Singapore will continue to be the company’s main production base of Nand flash memory chips used in solid-state drives, USB drives and mobile phones.
Nand constituted 22 per cent of Micron’s total revenue of US$9.3 billion in the third quarter of 2025, with turnover from data centres more than doubling year on year to hit a quarterly record.
Sadana said revenue from Singapore would keep increasing, especially when HBM output starts, noting: “That’s going to be a very big positive for us to be able to leverage Singapore for HBM sales that are, you know, very high-value sales that are growing rapidly.” THE STRAITS TIMES
Copyright SPH Media. All rights reserved.
