Micron sells 3D XPoint factory to Texas Instruments

Micron will sell its Lehi, Utah facility to Texas Instruments. The 3D XPoint memory was made in the factory, but earlier this year Micron announced that it would stop this. Texas Instruments buys the factory for the equivalent of 759 million euros.

The Lehi plant will be Texas Instruments’ fourth 300mm wafer plant and will be deployed by the company to make 65nm and 45nm chips for TI’s analog and embedded processing product categories. Maybe TI wants to start making other nodes in the factory as well. The sale is expected to be completed by the end of this year. TI aims to be able to sell the first products from the Lehi factory in early 2023.

Texas Instruments also wants to take the staff from the Lehi factory, according to Micron. In addition to the $900 million from the direct sale of the plant, the deal has an “economic value” of $600 million to Micron because of the tools “and other resources” released with the sale. Some of these resources are actually sold, the rest goes to other Micron factories.

Micron announced last March that it wanted to sell the factory. At the factory, Micron made the 3D XPoint memory, which Intel used for its Optane products. There were almost no other customers. Further development would therefore not be justified. Micron will instead invest more money in developing memory products that work with Compute Express Link.