The $16.5 billion deal inked last week for Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s Taylor foundry to make the newest generation of chips for Tesla’s electric vehicles is jumpstarting an already booming economic development scene for Williamson County.
The uncertainty of Samsung’s twice-delayed opening date for massive semiconductor manufacturing facility and its ability to land clients for the next generation of advanced chips had cast a pall on suppliers’ eagerness to locate in Central Texas.
Williamson County Economic Development Partnership officials made trips to South Korea in February and June to meet with the Samsung suppliers and other companies looking at Taylor, Hutto and other sites in the county.
The delegation tried to gauge from the companies if they were anticipating Samsung getting closer to opening and ready to resume stalled plans to set up operations near the foundry, said Dave Porter, CEO of the partnership.
The prognosis wasn’t hopeful in February, but by June the mood had shifted. By that point, Samsung had committed to a new opening date of late 2026. It had previously been delayed from late 2024 to sometime in 2025.
“They were more positive and eager and felt like (Samsung) had made it around the corner. They are eager to get back over here and do site selection,” Porter said.
Although the June trip predated Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s July 26 announcement about the partnership with Samsung, Porter said the certainty of a big client for the Taylor plant only helps.
“I think the timing is wonderful for Samsung,” Porter said.
Musk, the world’s richest person, made the announcement on social media platform X, which he owns. He calls Austin home, has several companies based in Austin and Bastrop County and the Tesla gigafactory where the Cybertruck and Model Y cars are made is just 30 miles from Samsung Austin Semiconductor’s Taylor campus.
“Samsung’s giant new Texas fab will be dedicated to making Tesla’s next-generation AI6 chip. The strategic importance of this is hard to overstate. Samsung currently makes AI4. TSMC will make AI5, which just finished design, initially in Taiwan and then Arizona,” Musk wrote on X last Sunday.
TSMC is Tawain Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., which has about two-thirds of the global market of supplying advanced chips to clients. Samsung’s market share has fallen from dominance over the years to less than eight percent of the market.
TSMC is building the first phase of its U.S. foundry in Arizona, which like Samsung also has experienced some delays. They have committed to invest about $100 billion at the site over time. Samsung is spending about $18 billion on its first phase and eventually plans to invest about $55 billion on expansions in Taylor and at the long-established Austin campus.
Making the AI6 chip, “will help Samsung to internalize AI chip production and attract other AI customers,” Peter Lee, a semiconductor analyst at Citigroup, told the Financial Times. “Tesla is a picky customer, so choosing Samsung as its foundry partner will help Samsung to win orders from other Big Tech companies.”
The deal also shines a positive light on Taylor and the county as a tech and manufacturing center.
Porter said the uncertainly of tariff negotiations have been tough on U.S. companies and many are putting expansion or relocation plans on hold, including those that would include Williamson County cities.
The tariffs are having the opposite effect on possible economic development deals with companies from other countries.
“We are especially seeing a lot of interest out of Taiwan,” Porter said of companies looking to locate manufacturing here to avoid the added cost of tariffs when selling to the U.S. market.
If Williamson County secures the win, there could be announcement of a Taiwanese manufacturer coming as soon as September, he said.
