Samsung Plans to Invest $1.5 Billion in Vietnam for Its First Chip Testing Factory

According to Reuters, Samsung Electronics plans to invest 39 trillion Vietnamese dong (about $1.5 billion) in building a semiconductor testing plant in Vietnam.

The official proposal document obtained by Reuters shows that the project was approved by Vietnamese authorities in March this year, and the plant is located in an industrial park 60 kilometers north of Hanoi. The new factory has begun preliminary construction in April and is expected to officially start production in November 2027; this will be Samsung's first chip testing plant established in Vietnam.

This investment plan is mainly aimed at alleviating the global shortage crisis of mature memory chips. The current surge in demand for artificial intelligence has led main chip manufacturers to shift a large amount of production capacity to cutting-edge AI chips, resulting in a severe supply limitation of traditional memory chips required by industries such as smartphones, laptops, and automobiles. The new factory will focus on the back-end testing of traditional chips, that is, defect detection of semiconductors that have been assembled and packaged before shipment, in order to fill the gap in the traditional supply chain.

According to the environmental permit proposal, the plant's annual production capacity after starting production is expected to reach 153.3 billion Gb of DRAM chips and 255.6 billion gigabits of NAND flash memory chips. If the project becomes profitable in the future, Samsung also plans to reinvest up to $250 million in profits for potential phase II plant construction. To date, more than 200 Samsung engineers and employees have been stationed on site, and heavy engineering vehicles have been observed conducting ground construction.

As the largest foreign investor in Vietnam, Samsung has accumulated more than $23 billion in investments over the decades, and the new factory is located adjacent to its large bases producing smartphones and tablet computers. This move will further strengthen Vietnam's position in the global semiconductor back-end industry chain. At present, Vietnam has gathered several multinational companies, including Intel, Amkor Technology, and Hana Micron, which are engaged in assembly, packaging, and testing factories.