The CHIPS and Science Act became law in August 2022. Its semiconductor provisions, often called the CHIPS Act, fund the construction and expansion of chip manufacturing facilities and semiconductor research in the United States. The Commerce Department runs the program under the name CHIPS for America, with offices housed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). [1][2]

This article describes public information about the program and is not legal, tax or investment advice. Companies considering an application or claiming the tax credit should consult the official program documents and qualified advisers.

According to NIST, the act appropriated 52.7 billion dollars over five years. The largest pieces are 39 billion dollars in manufacturing incentives, managed by the CHIPS Program Office, and 11 billion dollars for research and development, managed by the CHIPS Research and Development Office. The original R&D plan allocated 5 billion dollars to a National Semiconductor Technology Center, 3 billion dollars to a National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program, 519 million dollars to metrology research and 200 million dollars to a Manufacturing USA institute. [1]

Smaller allocations include 2 billion dollars for the Defense Department's Microelectronics Commons, 500 million dollars for the State Department for international technology security and supply chain work, and 200 million dollars for workforce programs run by the National Science Foundation. [1]

Alongside the grants, the act created the Section 48D advanced manufacturing investment credit, originally worth up to 25% of qualified spending on semiconductor manufacturing facilities and equipment. Legislation enacted in 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, raised the rate to 35% for property placed in service after 31 December 2025. Construction must begin before 1 January 2027 to qualify, which makes the end of 2026 an important deadline for new projects. [1][5]

Incentives were awarded in two steps. Commerce first signed non-binding preliminary terms with an applicant, then carried out due diligence and negotiated a final award. The Commerce Inspector General reported that from August 2022 through January 2025 the CHIPS Program Office made 20 awards for up to 33.7 billion dollars in direct funding and up to 5.5 billion dollars in loans, while the R&D office awarded nearly 8.3 billion dollars. [2][3]

Final award amounts could differ from preliminary terms. Manufacturing Dive's tracker records, for example, that Samsung's final award of 4.7 billion dollars was reduced from a proposed 6.4 billion dollars after due diligence. [3]

The largest finalized manufacturing awards, as listed in Manufacturing Dive's tracker, include TSMC with 6.6 billion dollars for three leading-edge fabs in Phoenix, Arizona; Micron with about 6.2 billion dollars for memory fabs in New York, Idaho and Virginia; Samsung with 4.7 billion dollars for facilities in Taylor and Austin, Texas; Texas Instruments with 1.6 billion dollars for fabs in Texas and Utah; and GlobalFoundries with 1.5 billion dollars for sites in New York and Vermont. [3]

Other awards targeted parts of the chain beyond front-end fabs, such as Amkor's packaging and test facility in Arizona (407 million dollars), SK hynix's memory packaging plant in Indiana (458 million dollars), GlobalWafers' silicon wafer production (406 million dollars) and Hemlock Semiconductor's polysilicon plant in Michigan (325 million dollars). [3]

TSMC reported that its first Arizona fab entered high-volume production in the fourth quarter of 2024 and expects its second Arizona fab to reach high-volume manufacturing in the second half of 2027. In March 2025, the company announced plans to raise its total planned US investment to 165 billion dollars, including additional fabs, two advanced packaging facilities and an R&D center. [9][10]

The program's approach changed significantly after January 2025. Manufacturing Dive reports that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Congress in June 2025 that the department was renegotiating some of the multibillion-dollar awards. The most visible change came in August 2025, when Intel and the administration agreed that the government would take a 9.9% stake in Intel, 433.3 million shares for 8.9 billion dollars, funded by 5.7 billion dollars of unpaid CHIPS grants and 3.2 billion dollars from the Secure Enclave program. [3][4]

Intel's announcement says the government's stake is passive, with no board seat, and that the government agreed to vote with Intel's board on most shareholder matters. It also says earlier claw-back and profit-sharing provisions tied to the grant were eliminated, and that the investment sits alongside 2.2 billion dollars in CHIPS grants already disbursed to the company. [4]

Equity has since become a common feature. A July 2026 Commerce announcement of 874 million dollars in letters of intent to seven companies, including 300 million dollars to GlobalFoundries for co-packaged optics, states that the department will receive a minority, non-controlling equity stake in each company, which it presents as a way to improve the return for taxpayers. Law firm Mayer Brown notes that all proposed or final awards under the R&D office's broad agency announcement appear to contemplate such stakes. [8][7]

The R&D side was restructured most deeply. According to a GAO report published in August 2026, Commerce cancelled its 7.4 billion dollar award to Natcast, the nonprofit chosen to run the National Semiconductor Technology Center, in August 2025 after concluding the arrangement violated federal law, and adopted a new charter in April 2026 under which Commerce would run the center directly. Awards under the advanced packaging program were paused or terminated from May 2025, and a 285 million dollar Manufacturing USA award was terminated in December 2025. [6]

In September 2025 Commerce issued a broad agency announcement focused on artificial intelligence, quantum technology, biotechnology and commercialization. GAO found that about 506.8 million dollars, roughly 5% of the 11 billion dollar R&D appropriation, had been spent by mid-2026. It recommended that Commerce set out plans for meeting the statutory requirements, and Commerce agreed with all three recommendations. [6]

As of September 2026, the program is still making awards, but with a wider scope. Recent finalized awards listed by Manufacturing Dive include 1 billion dollars for an IBM-related quantum wafer venture in Albany, New York, a 500 million dollar award to SandboxAQ and support for USA Rare Earth, reflecting a turn toward materials and critical minerals. [3]

Mayer Brown describes two open competitions as of August 2026: a CHIPS Program Office funding opportunity for materials and manufacturing equipment facilities, with concept plans due 1 November 2026 and a minimum project size of roughly 20 million dollars, and an R&D broad agency announcement open until 30 September 2029. Both exclude foreign entities of concern. [7]

The CHIPS Act does not change GPU prices on its own. Its effect on the compute market works through where leading-edge wafers, memory and packaging are produced over the next several years, which matters for supply resilience and for customers who need hardware made or hosted in particular jurisdictions. Most GPUs rented today are still built on supply chains centred in Asia, so short-term availability depends far more on current foundry, HBM and packaging capacity than on new US plants.

On Kovara you can see how today's supply conditions show up in the market: compare GPU cloud prices across providers, check which regions list specific accelerators, or ask Kova about how US-based capacity compares with other regions.