US tech giant Intel announced on Monday a plan to invest $600 million to expand its research and development facilities in Israel and has begun building another chip plant in Kiryat Gat, adjacent to its existing Fab 28 plant, which produces 10-nanometer chips, and is investing $10 billion in the project.
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The announcement was made during a one-day visit to Israel by Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who revealed that Intel will invest $400 million to create a new R&D campus at its Mobileye unit in Jerusalem, a Jerusalem-based developer of autonomous-driving technologies.
An additional $200 million will be invested in building an R&D facility, called IDC12, in the northern city of Haifa next to its current development center. The two facilities will create a mega-campus for designing chips with a capacity of 6,000 workers.
"I have been visiting Israel for 40 years now and every time it excites me anew to see how Intel Israel has grown from four employees way back in the past, to more than 14,000 employees today. I see in Intel Israel a microcosm of Intel worldwide, leading in innovation, research, development and production on an extensive scale, and we are investing accordingly," Gelsinger said in a statement.
Intel currently operates three existing development centers in Haifa, Petah Tikva, Jerusalem, and an advanced chip manufacturing plant in Kiryat Gat.
Intel bought Israeli artificial intelligence chip maker Habana Labs for $2 billion in 2019, and bought Israel's navigation technology start-up Moovit for $900 million in May last year.
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"Our continued investment in expanding our existing R&D centers and increasing production capacity in Israel, along with the acquisitions we made of Mobileye, the world leader in autonomous driving assistance solutions, Mobit, and Habana Labs, the leader in artificial intelligence, promises an exciting future for Intel and Israel," Gelsinger added.
This article was first published by i24NEWS.
