ISMC considers investing $3 billion in new chip foundry in India

The International Semiconductor Consortium (ISMC), a new joint venture between Abu Dhabi's Next Orbit Ventures and Israel's Tower Semiconductor, is preparing for a major investment. The consortium is reportedly considering investing no less than $3 billion in a new chip foundry in Karnataka, India.

The interesting thing is that Tower Semiconductor is being acquired by Intel, which means that Intel will replace Tower in the consortium before the new plant is completed.

There is not much information about ISMC at the moment, but the planned chip plant will be one of the first foundries in India and the largest foundry in India. So far, ISMC has only signed a memorandum of understanding with the Karnataka government, so things may still change. The new plant is expected to bring 1,500 direct jobs and about 10,000 indirect jobs to the region.

However, a $10 billion incentive package from the Indian central government could be part of the reason behind the decision. Tower Semiconductor specializes in various specialty process technologies such as SiGe, BiCMOS and SOI, and manufactures mixed-signal and RFCMOS chips for its customers, as well as CMOS-based image sensors, power management chips and various types of non-volatile memory and some MEMS products.