Intel Corp recently confirmed that it is spending $10 billion on a new chip plant. The company has come out to say that it is investing another $600 million in expanding its research and development (R&D) center in Israel. This was revealed last week by the company’s CEO; Pat Gelsinger during a one-day trip to Israel which is part of an European tour that Germany and Belgium are part of.
Out of the investment of $600 million, $400 million will be used to remodel its Mobileye unit headquarter in Jerusalem into a research and development (R&D) campus that will be used for research relating to self-driving car technologies. The remaining $200 million will be plunged into building a research and development (R&D) centre in the northern port city of Haifa. The new research and development centre will be called IDC12.
Intel has in the recent past purchased three Israeli tech companies. In 2017, the chip maker bought Mobileye which it is now remodelling into a research and development (R&D) centre for about $15 million. For $2 billion, Artificial Intelligence chipmaker; Habana was purchased. The third acquisition Moovit was purchased for $1 billion about a year ago.
According to Intel, the mega chip design facility will have a capacity of at least 6,000 employees. CEO Pat Gelsinger in a statement released on Sunday said that he sees “a vibrant future for Intel and Israel for decades to come”.
The first phase of construction for the new investment has already been initiated and Intel hopes that it will be able to meet the raging demand of chips that came about as a result of the pandemic.
“Intel Israel’s exports grew to a record $8 billion in 2020 from $6.6 billion in 2019, accounting for 14 percent of total high-tech exports and 2 percent of Israel’s GDP”, Reuters reported.
With almost 14,000 people employed, Intel is the largest employer in Israel’s high-tech industry.
Ibhadojemu Lucky Emmanuel is a graduate of Education and Economics from the University of Benin. He has a passion for tech and business and has been writing professionally for over a period of five years. He's written across various topics and segments and knew tech-business was it when he first stumbled on it. He has a great passion for music and arts, and wants to visit as many countries as he can someday.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
