Yahoo Autos Biden coming to Durham on Tuesday to visit expanding tech company
President Joe Biden will come to North Carolina on Tuesday to visit Wolfspeed, a chip manufacturer in Durham.
Biden will tout his administration’s efforts to boost domestic manufacturing and infrastructure, the White House announced Friday. It’s part of an “Investing in America” tour.
Last summer, Congress passed and Biden signed a bill that includes $52 billion for U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, known as the CHIPS Act.
Wolfspeed, formerly known as Cree, is building a factory in Chatham County that was expected to create 1,800 new jobs, The News & Observer reported.
“As an American company, Wolfspeed looks forward to welcoming President Joseph R. Biden and his team to its North Carolina headquarters, where they will see firsthand our cutting-edge facilities for producing Silicon Carbide,” Gregg Lowe, the CEO of Wolfspeed, said in a written statement Friday.
“Silicon Carbide is essential to accelerating the adoption of EVs, delivering energy savings to consumers, and meeting U.S. emission reduction targets, while reducing U.S. dependence on foreign production of critical semiconductor technology.”
Silicon carbide is a semiconducting compound the company grows, before turning it into thin blank chips called wafers. Wolfspeed then either sells these wafers to other chip manufacturers or sends them to its own fabrication factories, called fabs.
