Intel will invest another $600 million in Israel to expand its research and development (R&D).
Intel will also be spending $10 billion on a new chip plant.
Intel is investing $400 million to turn its Mobileye unit headquartered in Jerusalem into an R&D campus for developing self-driving car technologies.
Another $200 million will be invested in building an R&D centre, called IDC12, in the northern port city of Haifa next to its current development centre.
Intel said the mega chip design facility will have a capacity of 6,000 employees.
Intel has bought three Israeli tech companies – Mobileye in 2017 for more than $15 billion, artificial intelligence chipmaker Habana in 2019 for $2 billion and Moovit a year ago for $1 billion.
Israel’s Finance Ministry in early 2019 said Intel would get a $1 billion grant to build an $11 billion chip plant, although at the time Intel would not confirm the amount.
On Sunday, Intel said investment would be $10 billion and the first phase of construction has begun.
Its current Fab 28 plant at the company’s Kiryat Gat site produces 10 nanometre (nm) chips.
Intel has not disclosed whether the new plant will produce smaller chips, which can increase efficiency, but in March it said it was building two 7 nm chip plants in Arizona for some $20 billion, Reuters reported.
Intel Israel’s exports grew to a record $8 billion in 2020 from $6.6 billion in 2019, accounting for 14 percent of total high-tech exports and 2 percent of Israel’s GDP.
Intel is the largest employer of Israel’s high tech industry with nearly 14,000 workers.
