Micron flogs its Lehi 3D XPoint fab to Texas Instruments -- and not Intel

Memory maker Micron has sold its Lehi, Utah fab to Texas Instruments in a deal worth $1.5 billion. As reported earlier this year, the Lehi plant is the only one in the world capable of producing 3D XPoint memory. The sale of the factory pushes Intel into a corner as the chip giant will need to make some final decisions about its Optane product lineup. At the moment, Intel is the only company that still uses 3D XPoint memory so the sale of Micron's Lehi fab means time is running out for Intel. If the latter wants to keep selling Optane-based products, it will need to set up its own 3D XPoint production capacity sooner rather than later.

Texas Instruments will convert the 2 million square foot Lehi factory for the production of analog and embedded processors. It will be TI's fourth 300mm fab, initial production will use the 65nm and 45nm nodes. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2021.

Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU) announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its Lehi, Utah, fab to Texas Instruments. The economic value for Micron from the sale is $1.5 billion, comprised of $900 million in cash from TI from the sales transaction, and approximately $600 million in value from select tools and other assets. Micron has sold some of these assets and will retain the remainder to redeploy to its other manufacturing sites or sell to other buyers.

Micron’s Lehi, Utah, facility has been home to a highly skilled team with expertise in all aspects of advanced semiconductor manufacturing. TI will offer all Lehi site team members the opportunity to become employees upon the closing of the sale and intends to deploy its own technologies at the site. The sale is anticipated to close later this calendar year.

“Micron’s Lehi, Utah, facility has a strong history of technology innovation and leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing,” said Micron President and CEO, Sanjay Mehrotra. “We are pleased to have reached an agreement with Texas Instruments as it is an industry leader and truly values the talented Lehi team and the capabilities this site offers to deploy its technology effectively. We are greatly appreciative of the contributions that the Lehi team has made to Micron, as well as the collaboration and engagement Micron has had with the local community.”

Micron announced its intent to sell the Lehi facility in March 2021, at the same time the company confirmed plans to end production of 3D XPoint technology and pursue new memory solutions for data centers, enabled by the CXL interconnect. CXL delivers high-performance connectivity between compute, memory and storage, addressing increased customer workload requirements driven by the broad proliferation of artificial intelligence and data analytics.

Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP served as legal counsel to Micron, and Macquarie Semiconductor and Technology served as transaction advisors.