On Wednesday, Mark Liu, the chairman of the world’s largest contract chipmaker, TMSC, said his firm will make a final decision this week on whether to invest in the blockbuster initial public offering (IPO) for chip designer Arm Holdings.
On the sidelines of the SEMICON summit in Taiwan, Liu said the with respect to the new massive plant the company was building in the United States in Arizona, he had seen a “tremendous” improvement in the progress of the construction, and he had every confidence the facility would be successful.
He went on to say, “Arm is an important element of our ecosystem, our technology and our customers’ ecosystem. We want it to be successful, we want it to be healthy. That’s the bottom line.”
When asked when specifically the company would make the final decision, he said, “this week,” adding that the matter was still being evaluated.
On Tuesday, Softbank Group’s Arm Holdings began advertising its IPO. In this year’s biggest share sale, the chip designer is hoping to convince potential investors it is worth up to $52 billion.
Arm has already signed up a number of its major clients as investors in the IPO, including Apple, Nvidia, Alphabet, Advanced Micro Devices, Intel and Samsung Electronics.
Liu went on to say that the concerns over the Arizona facility’s progress due to a lack of skilled workers was overblown, and he was confident the facility would be successful.
He said, “I just came from Arizona last month. Any project of that new fertile ground will have some learning curve. In the past five months the improvement has been tremendous. I’m sure it will be a very successful project.”
TMSC had announced in July that production at the new chip fabrication facility, or fab, in Arizona, was seeing a shortage of specialist workers which would delay production until 2025, and so it was drawing upon technicians from Taiwan, who it would bring stateside to train the new staff at the facility.
The Arizona facility represents a $40 billion investment by the chipmaker, as a part of an initiative by Washington to bring more chipmaking onto US shores.
The US is not the only overseas expansion by the company, either. Liu pointed out TMSC is also investing 3.5 billion euros ($3.76 billion) in a German factory which will supply the automotive industry with specialized chips.
He said, “We are still applying for subsidies from the German government and the EU, it’s in process, but it’s all very smooth.”
Shares of TMSC fell 0.4% on Wednesday, alongside the broader index.