SINGAPORE, Jan 27 (Reuters) - U.S. memory chipmaker Micron Technology (MU) said on Tuesday it plans to build a $24-billion chip manufacturing plant in Singapore, as it races to boost output in the face of an acute global shortage.
The news, reported earlier by Reuters, comes amid an industry scramble to build AI infrastructure that has left sectors from consumer electronics to AI service providers battling a severe scarcity of all types of memory chips.
Micron said the new investment to build an advanced wafer fabrication facility over the next decade will help it meet growing market demand for NAND memory chips, fuelled by the rise of AI and data-centric applications.
Wafer output is set to begin in the second half of 2028 in a cleanroom space sprawling over 700,000 square feet (65,000 sq m), it added in a statement.
Micron makes 98% of its flash memory chips in Singapore where it is also building a $7-billion advanced packaging plant for high bandwidth memory (HBM), used in artificial intelligence chips, due to start production in 2027.
The HBM chip packaging facility in Singapore is on track to contribute to supply in 2027, it added on Tuesday.
Analysts said the memory supply shortfall could run through late 2027, although the chipmaker and its main rivals, South Korea's Samsung (005930.KS, SSNLF) and SK Hynix (000660.KS, HXSCL), plan new production lines and are advancing dates to start production.
TrendForce analyst Bryan Ao said that as demand outstrips supply, contract prices for enterprise solid-state drives are expected to rise by 55% to 60%.
"The market’s demand for high-performance storage equipment has been growing much faster than expected amidst the expansion of AI inference applications, and major North American cloud service providers have been exhibiting robust order pulls since the end of last year to seize on opportunities of the AI agent market," he said.
TrendForce data shows that Micron was the fourth largest flash memory chip supplier in the third quarter of 2025 with a 13% market share.
Last week, Micron said it was in talks to buy a fabrication site from Powerchip in Taiwan for $1.8 billion, which would boost its DRAM wafer output.
This month, SK Hynix told Reuters it plans to hasten the opening of a new factory by three months and begin operating another new plant in February.