Micron Technology has been selected to receive up to $6.14 billion in CHIPS and Science Act funding from the federal government. The Boise, Idaho-based tech firm says it will use the funds to construct four new fabrication plants — two in its hometown and two in New York State. Micron has committed an investment of up to $125 billion across both states over the next two decades as it endeavors to build a leading-edge memory manufacturing ecosystem. President Biden announced the preliminary funding agreement during a trip to the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology in Syracuse, New York.

Micron’s own expenditure “will be the largest private investment in New York and Idaho’s history, and will create over 70,000 jobs, including 20,000 direct construction and manufacturing jobs and tens of thousands of indirect jobs,” the White House announced in a statement. The deal will also see the federal government providing Micron with up to $7.5 billion in loans.

While 40 years ago America invented advanced processors, “we don’t make any of them today,” having ceded the business to Asia, Biden remarked, calling the 2022 CHIPS Act, “a big deal” that will restore the U.S. semiconductor industry to a pillar of the modern economy, creating a new American ecosystem around the research, design and manufacturing of advanced chips.

Thanks to CHIPS, new semiconductor factories are springing up all across the U.S., Biden told assembled guests, including New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-New York).

“Only about 10 percent of the world’s semiconductors are made in the United States, down from about 37 percent in 1990,” reports The New York Times, describing domestic chip production as “a major goal for Mr. Biden, whose economic policy agenda largely focuses on strengthening American manufacturing and bringing back jobs that have shifted overseas in recent decades.”

“Micron’s leading-edge memory is foundational to meeting the growing demands of artificial intelligence,” company CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said Thursday, adding that “workforce grants to support Micron’s efforts to build a vibrant talent pipeline are also being finalized.”

“As the pandemic showed, when we don’t shore up our supply chains and make these chips in America, it can skyrocket prices and threaten our national security,” Schumer said in a release leading up to the event. “This investment will build a more secure economy for the entire country, with Micron in Central New York as its beating heart.”