US chip equipment giant will take a stake in Korean glass substrate manufacturers

Applied Materials (AMAT), the largest chip equipment manufacturer in the United States, will participate in the capital increase project of Absolics, a chip glass substrate manufacturer under South Korean chemical materials company SKC.

According to the news announced by the Korean Financial Supervisory Service on the 2nd, SKC recently announced that Absolics decided to conduct a third-party allotment of shares to increase capital, raising 165.9 billion won (approximately RMB 904.2 million) for the construction of equipment. Absolics will issue 130,000 new shares. SKC and AMAT will participate in this capital increase, increasing their holdings by 90,000 and 40,000 shares respectively, with investment amounts of 114.8 billion won and 51 billion won, respectively. SKC said that Absolics will use the funds raised through this capital increase to invest in the construction of a chip glass substrate factory in the United States.

Absolics is building a chip glass substrate plant in Covington, Georgia, USA. By the end of next year, it will invest 240 million US dollars to build a production facility of 12,000 square meters, and plans to officially put into mass production from the second quarter of 2024.

The high-performance computing glass substrates produced at the plant can improve the performance and energy efficiency of computer chipsets and are a high-profile next-generation material in the field of semiconductor packaging.