Intel Breaks Ground on Two Arizona Fabs with Pat Gelsinger (Event Replay)

Arizona is known for its natural beauty, but this place has also had an incredible role in the world's digital transformation. In 1980, the first silicon wafers came off the production lines at Intel in Chandler, marking the start of Intel's U.S. manufacturing powerhouse. Today, our state-of-the-art megafactory network in Arizona is among the most advanced manufacturing facilities in the world. And over the last four decades, we've helped build an ecosystem of innovation right here in Arizona. And best of all, we're just getting started. We're investing 20 billion dollars to expand our Arizona operations, creating thousands of jobs, and setting the course for a new era of bold innovation with technology that has the power to improve the life of every human on our planet. It wouldn't be possible without the hundreds of Arizona businesses, big and small, that we depend on, and our people who are raising their families in this great state. And leading this future means living up to our purpose, which is bigger than the products we create. From empowering Arizona's next generation of innovators, to conserving and protecting Arizona's natural resources, and giving back where help is needed most, we're building a brighter future in ways that only Intel can. We're proud to call Arizona home, and we're committed to creating a better tomorrow for our community. Because together, we can achieve something wonderful. Good morning, and thank you for joining us here today to celebrate this new era of innovation for Intel and Arizona. My name is Yvitte Katz-Zameret, Intel Vice President and Arizona Factory Manager. I am very happy today. I've been waiting for this day for years. I have the immense privilege of building, starting up, and running two new factories here in Ocotillo, together with our leadership team, and the thousands of people who make up our technology manufacturing organization. This tremendous project is a continuation of the great growth story of Intel and Arizona for more than four decades. To me, no one is more enthusiastic about building world-class teams to run world-class operations than our first speaker. To share insights into the incredible things happening here in Arizona, please help me welcome Intel Senior Vice President and General Manager of Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Operations, Kayvan Esfarjani. Thank you, Yvitte. Good morning, everyone. It's a beautiful Arizona morning, and we appreciate you taking time to spend with us to celebrate the groundbreaking of newest and soon-to-be the largest semiconductor manufacturing site here in America. It's my honor to share the stage today with Intel CEO, Pat Gelsinger, the Governor of Arizona, Doc Ducey, Chancellor of Maricopa Community Colleges, Dr. Steven Gonzalez, the Mayor of Chandler, Mr. Kevin Hartke, and our host and our very own Ocotillo factory manager, Yvitte Gatz Samaret. What we have here in Arizona is simply amazing. For more than 40 years, Arizona has been vital to Intel's ability to deliver world-changing technology at high-volume manufacturing, and we are proud to be part of a thriving community here in the great state of Arizona and the city of Chandler. I am extremely proud of our teams here in Arizona, going above and beyond every day to meet the critical needs of our customers all around the world during this period of unprecedented demand. Your commitment to achieving these results safely with utmost quality is truly appreciated. The technological innovation and producing leading-edge products at this massive scale happens here in Chandler 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in our mega factories. It is incredible and almost magical. Collectively, these existing factories behind me have enough clean room to cover a dozen football fields, and they house over 3,000 most advanced equipments. Coupled with Intel's technologies, they create tiny, molecular-sized electronic circuits or pack millions of chips on the size of your fingernail. The Ocotillo campus is also home to the most ambitious on-site water treatment and recombination facilities. We treat more than 9 million gallons of water each day, and also 100 percent of electric power of our site is coming from green power. Intel takes environmental sustainability extremely seriously. Also, to build more than two more mega factories at this site, it requires strong collaboration with our trade companies, with labor unions, with the material and equipment suppliers. It is vitally important. I want to acknowledge the partnership with the National Electric Contractors Association, and we have members here, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Mechanical Contractors Association of America, and the United Association. We simply cannot execute this complex on this massive scale without you as our trusted partners joining us every day as part of the team. Our investments in these facilities and creation of thousands of jobs stretch more and more than inside our factories. Intel is proud of our long-standing investments in local STEM education programs and the support of advanced technical training at Arizona colleges and universities. Our 12,000 Arizona team members have volunteered over half a million hours of their time and talent in local communities over the past five years, with much of that generating matching grants to local non-profit organizations from Intel Foundation. We are extremely proud to be part of this thriving community and absolutely committed to continue this partnership moving forward. In March of this year, our CEO Pat Gelsinger announced Intel's exciting vision of ITM 2.0, which included these mega-site expansions here in Arizona and securing committed capacity for Intel Foundry customers. And here we are today, three months ahead, boss. I want to, there we go, go faster. Thank you. Thank you to our state and county partners for providing your unwavering support every step of the way, pulling the schedule, giving us the required permitting, and all the partnerships we needed to get this project started right away. And now to share more about Intel's future and the critical role Arizona plays in our strategy, please join me to provide a warm welcome to our CEO Pat Gelsinger. Isn't this awesome? Right, if this doesn't get you excited, right, check your pulse. You're welcome, and it's exciting to be here for the start of our two new fabs that we're going to be building right on this location. I promised to come and help with the excavation myself. I'm an old farm boy, and Kayvon said I'd be slowing the schedule down if I came to help. It is really an exciting day to be here, and this builds on 40 years that Intel has been in Arizona. This builds on a legacy of success that we have had in this community. With this announcement that I made in March of this year that we will be starting this facility, when I described that, I said we put our chips on the table, right, with this investment. Now we're going to put our shovels in the ground and get this thing underway, and we are excited for the opportunity to expand and now have over 50 billion dollars of invested capital in the state of Arizona. As Kayvon said, the largest semiconductor manufacturing in the world right here in your state, but as you've clearly heard, semiconductors are a hot topic these days, and we face a global shortage that is causing chips to halt and slow the production of many other areas of the economy, and we are doing our part, and today's announcement is part of closing that gap, but we're not just committing to build more capacity. This is leading-edge capacity. We want to have Arizona and Intel be the unquestioned leaders for the world supply of leading-edge semiconductors. We believe the semiconductor industry, an industry that the United States created, deserves, will be the leader in the future as well, and we will do our part. This is a tremendous generation of jobs. This is a, you know, one of those industries that there is everything good. It creates high-end jobs. It creates construction jobs. It builds community for schools, restaurants. Everything about this is an extraordinary developer of the community that we're in here, and these are critical to every aspect. Think today, what aspect of your life is not being increasingly driven by digital transformation, and if there was any question on that, COVID eliminated it. Every aspect of how we live, how we learn, how we care for, how we're in society with each other has been affected by the increasing digitization of everything, and everything digital runs on semiconductors. This is the most vital decisions for the economic and for the security of our nation, is will we have integrity of our supply chains? Will we have the leading technology to build our future? And these chips make possible the most incredible and important experiences, you know, and if we think about the incredible work of the vaccine generation, it was digital, and we're seeing our ability to continue to have school and continue to have work through a pandemic increased our dependence on digital. All of that runs on semiconductors, and these technologies that are born here influence the world. This is a great export, not just for our nation and state, but literally to support the entire world. We believe we're ushering in a new era of innovation with the work that we are doing here, but it isn't just for us. We have, as Kayvon said, launched a expanded strategy that we are now a foundry with Intel Foundry Services to open the doors of our fab wide for the community at large to serve the foundry needs of our customers, of the global semiconductor requirements, many of them U.S. companies that are dependent on solely having foreign supply sources today. We are changing that today, and Intel is in a unique position to help meet this growing global demand of semiconductors, and we are committed to do our part of that. As we've launched our new strategy, we've seen strong response from the industry enthusiasm for it, and we've seen that the U.S. government also has seen the criticality of this industry and is making major steps in addressing these shortages. And with the CHIPS Act that passed Senate earlier this year and is now in the House, we believe that that is an important next step to continue this journey of restoring the leadership position of the U.S. in this most critical area of semiconductors. And we believe that these steps, and we encourage all of you to let the Arizona constituent make sure we get this across the line, and every other representative, this is critical. Now is the time for the most aggressive set of public-private partnerships in our history. You know, and we also see, as Kayvon said, that this is not just about building industry, it's about doing so responsibly, inclusively, and sustainably as well. And that is core to who Intel is, our energy, water programs, recycling. We want to make this a great industry in every extent. You know, I do want to extend my gratitude for the extraordinary support that we have received to Mariposa County, for the Arizona legislature, for the U.S. administration, for the trades that support us in building and construction, for the community to welcome us, for business-friendly policies that we have found here. This has created the right conditions for this to become the Silicon Desert, a place that every other state, every other country wishes they were here. And this is yours. And I want to thank especially our 12,000 Arizona employees, but also the families of those 12,000, the communities that they're in, you know, because it is them and the support that they provide to our employees that allows us to do the magical things that we do here on this site. You know, and we depend on them to continue that progress as we build out this extraordinary location right here in Chandler, Arizona. So I thank you for joining us for today's celebration. Now it's my pleasure to turn the podium over to the great governor of the great state of Arizona, Governor Ducey. He's a CEO and now two-term CEO of the state of Arizona. And, you know, I was sort of excited when I saw that his first CEO was Coldstone. I like Coldstone. So maybe afterward we're all going to his place for some ice cream. So with that, please welcome the great Governor Ducey. Thank you. Thanks so much, Pat, and that's a deal. We can always get ice cream. I want to say it's my honor to be here today at this monumental event. Back in March, we were here at this campus announcing the eventual construction of these two fabs, and I think we all remember how big of an announcement it was. 3,000 high-tech, high-wage jobs for the state on top of the 12,000 jobs Intel already supports here. 3,000 construction jobs and more evidence that Arizona is the best place in the world to manufacture semiconductor chips. These are truly huge developments for our state, yet they don't even begin to scratch the surface of what this means for everyday Arizonans. The fact is Intel's expanded presence in Arizona will not only make life better for the women and men who live here, it also means more direct jobs at these plants. It means more jobs and opportunity up and down the economic ladder. Think about it this way. For each Intel job, five additional jobs are supported in Arizona. Last year, they had more than an 8.6 billion dollar economic impact on our state. And not to mention that semiconductor chips are manufactured and used by millions of people across the state of Arizona. Smartphones, laptops, washing machines, televisions, refrigerators, cars, all of these somehow need semiconductor chips to operate. For months now, the supply of chips hasn't been able to meet the demand, leaving us with a global shortage that's impacted the entire supply chain. Intel has stepped up in a big way to address that shortage. They put together a global strategy, and that strategy is rooted right here in our home state of Arizona. Intel's leadership and initiative will help more people across the country get the products they need to lead efficient, successful, healthy, and comfortable lives. And the best part is they've been able to accomplish all of this while preserving our environment. Intel is taking extraordinary steps to return nearly all the water it uses during construction of these plants. This is essential for Arizona's water future, and it lays out a blueprint for conservation strategies for future construction projects. It's hard to believe that just six short months ago, after their announcement, almost to the day, we're already breaking ground. In a way, it's emblematic of what the company does. They're always seeking to go bigger, innovate faster, and get results sooner. Intel is exactly the kind of company and culture we want right here in Arizona, and we're immensely grateful for their commitment to our state for the last 40 years, and for many years into the future. I want to thank the entire Intel team, all their employees, and specifically CEO Pat Gelsinger for building the future here in our state. I also want to recognize U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo for her partnership in attracting the best of the best companies to Arizona. I also want to recognize all the community leaders without whose partnership this would not be possible. Of course, Sandra Watson, President and CEO of the Arizona Commerce Authority, Senator J.D. Mesnard, Representative Jennifer Pawlik, Representative Jeff Weninger, Representative Jennifer Germain, Mayor Kevin Hartke of Chandler, and all the members of the Chandler City Council, Maricopa County Supervisor Jack Sellers, Dr. Steven Gonzalez, Chancellor of Maricopa County Community Colleges, Governor Stephen Rowe Lewis from Gila River Indian Community, Danny Seiden of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, and Chris Camacho from the Greater Phoenix Economic Council. Thank you all for working to keep Arizona the best place in the world for advanced manufacturing. Intel co-founder Robert Noyce once said, from the beginning at Intel, we planned on being big. I don't know if he realized how big they would become and how important they would be to the lives of people in Arizona, the economy in the United States of America, and international trade all around the globe. This is an exciting day for Arizona and the future of technology in our world. Thank you all for being here. Thank you, Governor Ducey. At Intel, we strive to be an employer of choice to attract and develop the best and the brightest talent. Here in Maricopa County, you won't find anyone more passionate about developing the hearts and minds of talented, motivated individuals. Please, welcome the Chancellor of Maricopa Community Colleges, one of the largest community college systems in the nation, Dr. Stephen Gonzalez. Good morning and thank you. I can now check off my bucket list, present, or give a speech in a haboob. Hello, my name is Dr. Stephen Gonzalez. I'm the Interim Chancellor of Maricopa Community College District and thank you for inviting me to this groundbreaking event. Though our system and Intel have already broken ground, when together we partnered and launched our new degree program, an Associate of Applied Science in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and Certification of Completion in Artificial Intelligence that will equip students with the knowledge needed for the workforce of the future. This is the first such degree offered in Artificial Intelligence at the community and technical college level in Arizona. Now, 18 other colleges around the country have taken what we started here and offering this program to their communities. We are proud to have put together a program that will help change lives. As one of the largest community college districts in the nation and the largest provider of workforce preparation for the state of Arizona, the Maricopa Community Colleges are well positioned to support the upskilling and re-employment needs of the hundreds of thousands of Arizonians in need of work. As a system, we embrace new technologies that grow talent and enable students to be more competitive in today's economy. We offer a dynamic curriculum that is reflective of the real world needs of local and state business entities. We have the ability to expand and existing programs and develop new ones, partnering academic innovation with the specific tailored job market needs of our business partners. I look forward to advancing our programs to train our community for a competitive workforce, strengthen Arizona's economy, and help close the opportunity gap we see across the state. Together, we are redefining what it means to be an innovator by expanding access to skills and experiences and ensuring the next generation of innovators are empowered, diverse, and inclusive. At Maricopa, we are passionate about improving the quality of life of any individual who seeks it. Thank you for your time and congratulations to Intel on this amazing feat. Thank you, Chancellor Gonzalez. Next, I would like to call on a great friend and supporter of the Ocotillo site. His leadership at the local and regional levels has been instrumental to our success in Chandler and we embrace his partnership and guidance in our next phase. Please welcome the mayor of Chandler, the Honorable Kevin Hartke. Well, good morning and welcome to Chandler. I think we're literally blown away by the size of and scope of what is happening here. There's been a lot of conversation already about what this means. I'm just honored and excited to be the mayor of the city known as the community of innovation and to be part of this celebration and presence of Intel. When Intel chose Chandler over 40 years ago, it attracted many other global partners across our city and state that has really shaped and formed Chandler and our state. But beyond the economic impact, which is massive, I do want to just take a moment and thank Intel for the work that they've done as community partners. I think we can all agree that Intel's employees, our residents, and I am a proud Intel family member with my son working here, that this relationship has indeed been special for all of us. Intel employees are known for their generosity in volunteering their time, their talents, and the resources to make our community better. Whether that's in schools or other endeavors across our community, Intel has shown up again and again and again. And although I'm proud that Arizona's largest private investment in history is happening in our city, I'm even more thankful for Intel's commitment to corporate citizenship and the contribution it has made to ensuring an exceptional quality of life for our community and our state. So I'm grateful for Intel's partnership and commitment to this community. We look forward to innovating with you for years and years to come, not only for the groundbreaking of fab 52 and 62, but Pat, we're ready for 72. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. What we've built here in the last 40 years is inspiring. From what you have heard this morning, you can probably tell why I feel so excited to be working in such a special place with such a great team. And it is our incredible team that has made all of this possible. We are a world-class team of problem solvers, innovators, and inventors who are helping to shape the future of technology. I'm passionate about growing this team through purpose, sense of belonging, and inclusion. We come from so many diverse backgrounds and we operate as one Intel. From our fabs to our labs, we have amazing people sharing their passion for technology and community. As our team grows, we'll continue to provide opportunities for others to grow their careers with us, right here in Arizona. Technicians, engineers, and so much more. We'll continue our commitment to education so we can help make our community a more prosperous and vibrant place for everyone. And just as important, we will continue to build on our focus on sustainable manufacturing from energy and water to waste. We all have responsibility to be stewards of the environment around us for our community and our planet as we continue to grow. The future of Intel is bright. The future of Arizona is bright. And we are stronger together. Thank you for celebrating with us here today. And now, please join us for our travel ceremony here behind the stage.