Micron announced that it will invest US$10 billion in its Boise site over the next 10 years to establish Micron Research Labs. Congratulatory messages from the CEOs of NVIDIA and Apple underscored the company’s move to strengthen collaboration with customers and academia around the research center.
Micron, a major semiconductor manufacturer, announced that it will invest US$10 billion over the next 10 years to establish Micron Research Labs, a research center in Boise, Idaho. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2027, and the company plans to accommodate several hundred researchers once the facility is complete, with a focus on 4 research areas. The announcement included congratulatory messages from Jensen Huang and Tim Cook, and highlighted plans to strengthen collaboration with customer companies, academic institutions and the government.
The center is positioned as part of the company’s broader investment program and, over the longer term, as part of approximately US$260 billion in investment in the United States. Against a backdrop of growing demand centered on HBM, Micron has indicated that it aims to reinvent memory technology and architectures through the research center.
Meanwhile, Western Digital has begun operating the AI Data Infrastructure Co-Creation Research Institute in Japan in partnership with Tohoku University. Following the spin-off of Sandisk, WD is pursuing a model that brings basic research in-house through joint research with academic institutions. Japan’s semiconductor ecosystem is placing greater emphasis on research centers in addition to mass-production facilities.
As for market trends, the view remains that DRAM and NAND prices will continue to rise amid a sharp increase in HBM demand from AI data centers, and that prioritizing HBM production could lead to higher prices being passed on to customers. Micron’s investment in the research center is positioned against this backdrop of a long-term technology strategy.