Excerpt
February 21, 2024, Audio: "Nvidia, one of the country’s most valuable companies by market capitalization, reported stronger than expected quarterly results this afternoon. The semiconductor company is known for designing GPUs, the chips that support artificial intelligence. Nvidia is headquartered in California, but its largest manufacturing partner is TSMC in Taiwan. The majority of all chips are manufactured in Asia, but the federal government would love for the U.S. to get a bigger piece of that chipmaking pie. This week, as part of the CHIPS and Science Act, the Biden administration announced it’s awarding $1.5 billion to chipmaker GlobalFoundries to expand its manufacturing stateside. Even if they’re made elsewhere, the U.S. is far and away the global leader in designing advanced chips, said Harvard Business School professor Willy Shih. “Whether they are pure digital chips, or chips for radios that go into phones, or what have you,” he said. Shih — who’s also an unpaid advisor to the Commerce Department on the CHIPS Act — pointed out that of the $39 billion in the law to incentivize making chips here, this latest award to GlobalFoundries is the biggest we’ve seen to date."