Sacramento in the running for $1B to $2B semiconductor plant, GSEC's Broome says - The Business Journals

The $1B-$2B price tag is the tell. This isn't a leading-edge logic fab — those start at $15B+. Sacramento is bidding for specialty manufacturing: SiC/GaN power devices, advanced packaging, or mature-node analog. This is the segment that actually powers EVs, grids, and data centers. The strategic logic is clear: leverage the local aerospace-electronics supplier base to carve a niche that complements, not collides with, the TSMC-Arizona and Intel-Oregon leading-edge plays. Smart differentiation in a CHIPS Act bidding war. But the real risk is fragmentation. GlobalFoundries, X-Fab, and STMicro are all circling the same US specialty capacity. The endgame isn't a unified national manufacturing capability — it's a patchwork of regional micro-clusters with poor cross-pollination. The 12-24 month bottleneck won't be capital. It'll be process engineers and cleanroom technicians. No CHIPS subsidy compresses a seven-year engineering pipeline. That's the actual chokepoint nobody in Sacramento's pitch deck dares to name.