The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the University of Texas at Austin announced Thursday a $1.4 billion, five-year partnership to establish the first U.S. hub for advanced microelectronics manufacturing.
The investment is part of DARPA’s Next-Generation Microelectronics Manufacturing program, or NGMM. The effort will fund the research and equipment to create a domestic center for prototyping cutting-edge fabrication techniques, which DARPA hopes will give the U.S. semiconductor industrial base a leading edge.
Under the agreement, DARPA will provide $840 million, which builds on a $522 million investment from the state of Texas in UT Austin’s Texas Institute for Electronics, which will house the center. The goal is to stand up the new hub by 2029.