Marking a groundbreaking months after dirt started moving and the outlines of production and research buildings emerged north of Kalberer Road, SK hynix’s CEO said during ceremonies Thursday that the company plans to have its cleanroom ready for high-bandwidth memory production at a West Lafayette facility in October 2028.
Noh-jung Kwak, SK hynix president and CEO, said that by the second half of 2029, the South Korean company planned to be on pace to assemble hundreds of thousands of wafers annually, feeding growing demand for AI applications, at the 340,000-square-foot facility northeast of Yeager and Kalberer roads that is now valued at $4 billion.
“By 2030, Indiana is expected to become a key (high-bandwidth memory) production base in America,” Kwak told hundreds gathered for invitation-only ceremonies at Purdue’s Holloway Gymnasium, where elaborate videoboard demonstrations of semiconductor fabrication and supply chain goals played below the banners for Boilermaker volleyball All-Americans.
“We will provide our customers with a new source of made-in-the-U.S. HBM, while strengthening the U.S. semiconductor supply chain and contributing to national and economic security,” Kwak said.
Billed as an official groundbreaking, Thursday’s event came more than two years after SK hynix announced plans in April 2024 – that time in the Purdue Memorial Union Ballroom – to build an advanced packaging plant and R&D facility in West Lafayette, leaning into research partnerships with Purdue and hopes of university, state and national leaders that they’d found the first piece for a larger semiconductor ecosystem in Indiana.
“Today is a commencement for us in the same sense that it is when our graduates depart this place,” Mitch Daniels, Purdue’s interim president, said. “Our job begins here. We are completely committed to your success. … Indiana has a proud economic history. We’ve been the No. 1 steel producer for a long time. We’ve been the No. 2 auto producer for a very long time. We’re a growing force in the world of life sciences. In 10 or 20 years from now, when people observe that Indiana is the home of the semiconductor industry and all the related technologies, the more astute among them to realize that great achievement started today.”
How that might play out beyond the West Lafayette project – where 1,000 people are expected to work, with another 6,000 jobs tied to SK hynix suppliers – wasn’t clear Thursday.
Kwak said SK hynix planned to “expand its investment” in America. But he said those specifics were still under discussion.
Daniels, Gov. Mike Braun and other officials there Thursday said they didn’t have news, only hope, on that front.
“You heard them say that this is the beginning,” Daniels said. “I think our goal is to make life very difficult for (West Lafayette) Mayor (Erin) Easter to help provide housing and services and so forth to what’s surely going to be a fast-growing community.”
Easter added: “I can’t speak for those that are having those conversations … but I think this is a strong signal to anyone who’s partnered with SK hynix, whether it’s their suppliers or people who are working with them, of their true dedication to this community and creating an ecosystem here. So, I certainly anticipate that we will get quite a bit busier after today.”
“When you talk about all you’re going to get with someone like the SK hynix of the world, it’s hard to tell,” Braun said. “But it you don’t have it as the foothold, you wouldn’t have that ecosystem. … I’ve met with all of them today, and we’ve been meeting with them along the way. It’s clear when they’re putting this much money into one place, on the leading edge of what drives all technology currently, they wouldn’t have made that decision to this point otherwise, because that’s a long-term commitment and investment.”
The facility along Yeager Road is roughly 7% complete, with the 100-foot cleanroom structure at about 15%, all running on schedule, Hyunjoong Kim, SK hynix’s lead on the construction, said during a tour a day earlier for media from South Korea and U.S. national outlets.
The construction also is happening as two lawsuits filed by nearby residents head for a Dec. 1 bench trial, challenging a May 2025 rezoning vote by the West Lafayette City Council that provided the industrial designation for the 121-acre property in the Purdue Research Park. Yard signs dotting neighborhoods near the site continue to urge the city council to reverse the rezone and to stop heavy industry near residential neighborhoods.
Were those court cases causing any nerves for SK hynix’s upper ranks? Kwak said Thursday the company was watching the proceedings as they went through the legal process.
Once finished, SK hynix’s facility will take semiconductor chips made in Korea and China and stack them into specialized high-bandwidth memory. As of the first quarter in 2026, SK hynix had a 58% share of the high-bandwidth memory market, according to figures from Counterpoint Research.
U.S. Sen. Todd Young, an Indiana Republican who helped carry the CHIPS and Science Act, called the West Lafayette project key to the sort of onshoring of the semiconductor industry the federal legislation was supposed to encourage when it passed in 2022.
SK hynix received $458 million in federal grants and up to $500 million in loans under the CHIPS Act in December 2024. Aside from the CHIPS Act funds, the Indiana Economic Development Corp. and SK hynix signed an Innovation Development District fund grant agreement in June 2024. According to the document, available on the IEDC’s transparency portal, the agreement runs from Dec. 12, 2023, to Dec. 31, 2055, offering a maximum grant amount of $712 million.
“Semiconductors have become one of the most important technologies in the world because every advanced industry depends on it,” Young said Thursday. “And given the role microchips play in powering our economy and securing our nation, and the clear catastrophe that would follow if our supply of these was cut off, why would we ever rely on the goodwill or good fortune of other nations for their fabrication?”
During Thursday’s ceremony, Purdue and SK hynix officials also signed a memorandum of understanding and R&D collaboration in the advanced packaging field.
Purdue has a series of academic cleanroom facilities and specialty labs in the Birck Nanotechnology Center on the West Lafayette campus. SK hynix officials said in 2024 that proximity to Purdue semiconductor and engineering research facilities – and the student pipeline coming out of those into the workforce – was one reason to pick West Lafayette for its high-bandwidth memory project.
Zhihong Chen, director of the Birck Nanotechnology Center, and Joerg Appenzeller, Birck’s scientific director of nanoelectronics, said during a tour the facility this week that Purdue researchers were making presentations to SK hynix officials to find which aspects of campus research would fit. They said 130 students a year were going through programs to get hands-on experience in cleanrooms, with a current waiting list of 110 and more going through “digital twinning” program that puts them into virtual research settings.
“(Companies) would like their employees to be trained before they go into their manufacturing site,” Chen said. “We know that our students are very popular. Not only SK hynix loves our students, many other fabs tell us that they want 100% of our students.”
Other notes …
On SK hynix’s project estimate: After announcing in 2024 that the West Lafayette project would cost $3.87 bill, officials upped that to $4 billion. Asked what contributed that larger cost – whether it was changes in the industry or changes in the project’s focus in some way – Kwak said that “the investment figure from the company perspective is rather minimal.” He said the main difference is that “there has been a stronger demand from the market.”
Mung Chiang back on campus: Daniels’ comments Thursday included thanks to former Purdue President Mung Chiang, “who played such a big role in bringing today to fruition. Chiang, who left Purdue July 1 to become president at Northwestern University, had been Purdue’s engineering and vice president of strategic initiatives when the pursuit of SK hynix started in 2022 and was president when the company landed in 2024. Chiang wasn’t among the speakers Thursday, but he was in the audience and seen greeting SK hynix officials after the event.
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Groundbreaking? Kind of looks like ground was broken several months ago.