The Biden Administration says it is recognizing the symbiotic relationship between chipmakers and suppliers by incentivizing those suppliers as it continues to support and fund U.S.-based semiconductor production. 

To further bolster the resilience of the semiconductor supply chain, the U.S. Department of Commerce on June 23 announced that tool and chemical suppliers are now eligible for federal funding under the CHIPS and Science Act.

The department’s “Vision for Success” plan outlines strategic objectives for investments in the semiconductor supply chain, and it includes goals to:

•  Incentivize major U.S. manufacturing equipment and materials suppliers to increase their footprints in the United States and attract non-U.S. suppliers of the world’s most advanced equipment, materials, and subsystems to establish large-scale footprints here.
• Support U.S. semiconductor fabrication clusters, including by ensuring that each CHIPS-funded cluster is supported by an ecosystem of reliable suppliers. 

Chipmakers do business with “thousands of individual suppliers that provide the highly complex materials and tools used to produce semiconductors,” officials wrote in the Vision for Success executive summary text.

“The CHIPS Incentives Program presents a unique opportunity to build on U.S. strengths in the supply chain, as a historic expansion of U.S. chipmaking capacity boosts domestic demand for semiconductor manufacturing inputs. If successful, the CHIPS Incentives Program will not only address supply chain vulnerabilities but also accelerate U.S. innovation in manufacturing equipment and materials and grow the supplier ecosystems supporting new clusters of U.S. fabs,” according to the Vision for Success introduction text.