Report: Samsung to Pick Taylor, Texas, for its $17 Bln Chip Plant

The logo of Samsung is seen on a building during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain February 25, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman
The logo of Samsung is seen on a building during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain February 25, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman
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Report: Samsung to Pick Taylor, Texas, for its $17 Bln Chip Plant

The logo of Samsung is seen on a building during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain February 25, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman
The logo of Samsung is seen on a building during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain February 25, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman

South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Tuesday it had not made a final decision on the location of a new $17 billion chip plant in the United States, after the Wall Street Journal reported it would be Taylor, Texas.

The WSJ said Texas Governor Greg Abbott was scheduled to make an "economic announcement" on Tuesday.

A site in Texas's Williamson County, near the city of Taylor, offered the best incentives package of the sites Samsung was considering, sources previously told Reuters. The world's biggest memory chipmaker has said it is also considering sites in Arizona and New York.

The new plant is set to make advanced logic chips used to power mobile devices and autonomous vehicles, as the global auto industry faces a significant semiconductor shortage.

The factory would mark Samsung's second chip factory in Texas, where it already manufactures chips at a plant in Austin.

Samsung is joining rivals TSMC and Intel in the race to expand chip contract manufacturing in the United States, where the sector is seen as an area of strategic competition with China.

US President Joe Biden's administration has promised billions of dollars in federal funding to boost chip manufacturing and research to ensure it has an edge over China in advanced technologies and to address shortages for critical industries like autos.



TikTok Calls Report of Possible Sale to Musk's X 'Pure Fiction'

The TikTok logo is displayed outside the offices of the social media app's company offices in Culver City, California, on March 16, 2023. (AFP)
The TikTok logo is displayed outside the offices of the social media app's company offices in Culver City, California, on March 16, 2023. (AFP)
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TikTok Calls Report of Possible Sale to Musk's X 'Pure Fiction'

The TikTok logo is displayed outside the offices of the social media app's company offices in Culver City, California, on March 16, 2023. (AFP)
The TikTok logo is displayed outside the offices of the social media app's company offices in Culver City, California, on March 16, 2023. (AFP)

TikTok on Tuesday labeled as "pure fiction" a report that China is exploring a potential sale of the video-sharing platform's US operations to billionaire Elon Musk as the firm faces an American law requiring imminent Chinese divestment.

Citing anonymous people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg News had earlier reported that Chinese officials were considering selling the company's US operations to Musk's social media platform X.

The report outlined one scenario being discussed in Beijing where X would purchase TikTok from Chinese owner ByteDance and combine it with the platform formerly known as Twitter.

"We cannot be expected to comment on pure fiction," a TikTok spokesperson told AFP.

The report estimated the value of TikTok's US operations at between $40 billion and $50 billion.

Although Musk is currently ranked as the world's wealthiest person, Bloomberg said it was not clear how Musk could execute the transaction, or if he would need to sell other assets.

The US Congress passed a law last year that requires ByteDance to either sell its wildly popular platform or shut it down. It goes into effect on Sunday -- a day before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

The US government alleges TikTok allows Beijing to collect data and spy on users and is a conduit to spread propaganda. China and ByteDance strongly deny the claims.

TikTok has challenged the law, taking an appeal all the way to the US Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on Friday.

At the hearing, a majority of the conservative and liberal justices on the nine-member bench appeared skeptical of arguments by a lawyer for TikTok that forcing a sale was a violation of First Amendment free speech rights.

Bloomberg characterized Beijing's consideration of a possible Musk transaction as "still preliminary," noting that Chinese officials have yet to reach a consensus on how to proceed.

Musk is a close ally of Trump and is expected to play an influential role in Washington in the coming four years.

He also runs electric car company Tesla, which has a major factory in China and counts the country as one of the automaker's biggest markets.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to enact new tariffs on Chinese goods, which would expand a trade war begun in his first term and which was largely upheld, and in some cases supplemented, by outgoing President Joe Biden.