Your car has 1,000 chips in it. Almost none are made here — yet.

Here’s a fact that should keep you up at night.

American companies design more than half the world’s semiconductors. We own the intellectual property. We write the code. We draw the blueprints. But when it comes to actually making the chips? We produce only about 10% of the global supply.

The rest gets built overseas. Taiwan. South Korea. China. If any of those supply lines break — a war, a disaster, a trade dispute — the consequences ripple fast. Consumer electronics, medical devices, defense systems. All of it depends on chips.

Washington decided to fix that. And the money is now pouring in.

The CHIPS and Science Act put $52.7 billion in federal money on the table. The CHIPS Act — combined with surging AI demand and supply chain fears — has triggered a private investment wave approaching $400 billion. Here are the big players and where they’re building.

TSMC — Phoenix, Arizona. The world’s largest chipmaker has committed $165 billion across multiple U.S. fabs. Phase 1 is already shipping 4nm chips to Apple and NVIDIA. Phase 2 is under construction for 3nm. A third fab is planned for 2nm.

Intel — Ohio, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico. Intel is betting $100 billion-plus on its foundry comeback. Its Ohio megasite alone will house multiple fabs. CHIPS Act grants of up to $7.9 billion are helping fund the buildout.

Micron — New York, Idaho, Virginia. The memory chip giant is spending $200 billion over 20 years. Its New York megafab broke ground in January. The Boise expansion is expected to follow.

Samsung — Taylor, Texas. A $37 billion campus is taking shape outside Austin. The first fab targets operations in late 2026, though the project has faced repeated delays. It’s the largest foreign investment in Texas history.

GlobalFoundries — New York, Vermont. GF committed $16 billion to upgrade its existing U.S. fabs, targeting AI and power-efficient chips.

Let me explain how the money flows. The U.S. semiconductor market was roughly $86 billion in 2025 and growing near 9% a year. Globally, chip sales hit $792 billion in 2025 and are on track to approach $1 trillion in 2026, according to the SIA and Deloitte.

The jobs impact is already showing. Research from Brookings and the NBER estimates the CHIPS Act created roughly 15,000 direct semiconductor jobs so far. Add in construction and supply chain roles, and that number doubles or triples. But there’s a catch: the SIA and Oxford Economics project a shortfall of 67,000 workers by 2030.

You can play this wave several ways. The obvious picks are the chipmakers themselves: Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), Texas Instruments (NASDAQ: TXN), and Micron (NASDAQ: MU) all have massive U.S. buildouts underway. NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) designs the AI chips that drive the demand.

But I like the second-order plays. Someone has to build these fabs. Someone has to make the tools inside them. Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT), Lam Research (NASDAQ: LRCX), and KLA Corp (NASDAQ: KLAC) sell the equipment that every fab needs. No matter which chipmaker wins, the toolmakers get paid.

A word of caution. Not every dollar announced will get spent. Intel has scaled back timelines. Samsung is struggling to land customers for its Texas fab. The Trump administration has renegotiated some CHIPS awards downward. And U.S.-made chips cost 20–30% more than Asian imports. Announced investments are not the same as finished factories.

The broadest bet? The SPDR S&P Semiconductor ETF (XSD) or the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX). Both give you exposure to the whole sector in one trade. When $400 billion flows into American chip factories, a rising tide lifts a lot of boats.