Kind: Measured report
By Asif Hussain, Founder and CEO, SpecIndex
Since January 2025, SpecIndex's own database of public bid and permit records has logged 51 semiconductor linked construction projects across 14 states, with a combined estimated value of $100 billion. Of that $100 billion, one project accounts for effectively all of it: Micron's four fab megafab campus in Clay, New York, permitted at $100 billion with first concrete already poured, per the project record.
That is the real shape of semiconductor fab investment right now, and it is not the shape most coverage implies. This is not fifty comparably sized projects spread across the country. It is one project an order of magnitude larger than the entire rest of the sector combined, plus a long tail of smaller buildouts and equipment installs at existing fabs.
Facts at a glance
- Since January 2025, SpecIndex's own database of public bid and permit records has logged 51 semiconductor linked construction projects across 14 states, with a combined estimated value of $100 billion. (From: the opening paragraph.)
- Of that $100 billion, one project accounts for effectively all of it: Micron's four fab megafab campus in Clay, New York, permitted at $100 billion with first concrete already poured, per the project record. (From: the opening paragraph.)
- All figures in this article are retained from the original September 2026 count. (From: Method note and scope.)
The long tail is where the construction activity actually is
Strip out the Micron New York megafab and the remaining 50 projects, worth roughly $15 million in tracked value, tell a different and in some ways more useful story: fab investment as a series of incremental expansions and tool installs at facilities that are already operating.
| State | Projects (2025 to present) | Notes from the record |
|---|---|---|
| Texas | 24 | Predominantly smaller permitted work at existing semiconductor sites |
| Idaho | 11 | Micron's Boise campus: HPM (hazardous production material) support buildings for the ID1 fab expansion |
| Arizona | 6 | Applied Materials tool installations (ALD, CVD deposition systems) at existing fab sites |
| Georgia | 6 | Mixed semiconductor-adjacent industrial permits |
| North Carolina | 3 | No additional note |
| California | 3 | No additional note |
Download CSV (the rows above, exactly as shown)
The Idaho projects are a good example of what fab construction looks like at the permit level rather than the press release level: a series of building permits for HPM unloading and containment structures, the buildings that receive tanker trucks of process chemicals, rather than one large "new fab" filing. A megafab campus generates dozens of these support building permits long before or instead of a single filing that says "semiconductor fab" in the project name.
The Arizona projects show the other half of the picture: tool installation work at Applied Materials served fab sites, filed as discrete permitted scopes (an ALD deposition tool here, a CVD system there) rather than as construction of the building itself. This is what fab investment looks like once a facility is operating. It is not new square footage, but a continuous stream of process tool installs, each one a separate permitted project.
One project can be the whole market in fab construction
Semiconductor fab construction is capital concentrated in a way data center construction is not. A hyperscale data center campus can be built in phases by multiple developers competing for the same power rich counties.
A leading edge fab is a different kind of asset: only a handful of companies in the world build them, each new node requires billions in tooling before the building even matters, and CHIPS Act incentives have concentrated recent announcements in a small number of states that already had semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure. New York, Arizona, Texas, Ohio and Idaho are chief among them.
The result, visible directly in SpecIndex's own permit data, is a market where a single owner's single decision outweighs the combined construction activity of every other semiconductor project filed nationally in the same 20 month window. That decision is Micron choosing Clay, New York for a four fab campus.
Specification language shows up in HPM buildings and tool installs
A fab's HPM support buildings and process tool installs are exactly the kind of permitted scope that surfaces mechanical, electrical and specialty equipment specification language. That language includes Division 13 (Special Construction) for cleanroom and containment systems, Division 23 for the process exhaust and chemical delivery systems documented in the Idaho HPM buildings above, and Division 26 for the electrical infrastructure serving process tools.
Equipment manufacturers named in these permitted scopes are specified section by section the same way any other building product is. The Applied Materials tool designations in the Arizona projects are a direct example. That means the basis of design mechanics described elsewhere on the Spec Desk apply here as directly as anywhere in construction: a fab operator's tool vendor list, once established at one site, tends to recur at the next expansion.
This count misses filings that avoid the keywords
Fifty one projects across 14 states is a real but thin sample next to the hundreds of data center projects SpecIndex tracks in the same window, and the sector's true construction volume is almost certainly undercounted here. Leading edge fab construction is dominated by a small number of owners who manage permitting through specialized process and cleanroom equipment contractors whose filings do not always use "semiconductor," "fab" or "wafer" in the public description, so a keyword based count like this one will miss projects that a manual review of each state's industrial permit stream would catch.
The $100 billion figure is accurate to the public record as filed. It is the record of one project in the main, not a comprehensive national fab investment total.
Method note and scope
We counted semiconductor linked projects in SpecIndex's own corpus of public bid and permit records. The match rule is the terms semiconductor, fab, and wafer matched in project name or description. The date field is `opened_or_announced_date`, and the window is January 1, 2025 onward.
All figures in this article are retained from the original September 2026 count. That includes the 51 projects, the $100 billion combined value, the roughly $15 million in tracked value for the remaining 50 projects, and the state counts in the table. The corpus keeps growing, so the figures are dated and will not match a live count run later.
The scope limit is the one this article already concedes. A filing that avoids the words semiconductor, fab, and wafer in its public name or description is missed by this count, even if a manual review of the permit stream would catch it.