Air Liquide is set to invest $250 million in a new industrial gas plant in Idaho to provide ultra-pure nitrogen and other gases to U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology.
Semiconductor companies are increasing production capacity to meet the anticipated surge in demand for chips, which are essential in almost all electronic devices.
“This investment will support the production of leading-edge memory chips, notably to meet the growing demand for computing capacities required by artificial intelligence,” said Matthieu Giard, Air Liquide’s CEO for the Americas.
Micron recently began mass production of its high-bandwidth memory (HBM) semiconductors, which are used in Nvidia’s latest AI chips.
Air Liquide expects the new plant to be operational by the end of 2025, creating hundreds of direct and indirect jobs.