Schumer bringing head of Albany Nanotech as guest to Biden's State of Union address
ALBANY – Albany Nanotech leader David Anderson is going to be a special guest of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer during President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol Tuesday night.
Schumer invited Anderson to highlight the work that Schumer and the Biden administration did last year to pass the $52 billion CHIPS and Science Act designed to significantly expand computer chip manufacturing in upstate New York and elsewhere across the country in order to combat China’s growing intent to dominate the industry and possibly invade Taiwan, where many of the world’s most advanced chips are made. The CHIPS act provides billions of dollars in subsidies to companies that expand chip manufacturing in the U.S. in order to free the U.S. and its chip manufacturing supply chain from China’s sphere of influence.
GlobalFoundries, which has a chip factory in Saratoga County, has said it would like to utilize CHIPS funding for a second factory there, and Micron Technologies, which is planning a $100 billion memory chip factory outside of Syracuse, also plans to utilize CHIPS funding along with hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits offered by New York to facilitate the project.
Anderson’s appearance at the State of the Union also supports Schumer’s desire that Albany Nanotech be selected to be a major part of a new federal chip research lab that would also be funded through $11 billion set aside in the CHIPS legislation, which was signed into law last year by Biden.
Schumer has also invited a U.S. military veteran to the State of the Union who is the first employee hired by Micron for the Syracuse project.
Anderson will be seated in the gallery where TV cameras often focus their coverage when the president is speaking about certain people or issues. It is unclear if Biden will mention the CHIPS legislation or Albany Nanotech or Micron in his remarks.
Anderson is a longtime semiconductor industry executive who was hired by the state last year to run Albany Nanotech and NY Creates, a state-run nonprofit that oversees Albany Nanotech’s real estate and programs in Albany and in other parts of upstate New York such as Utica, Buffalo, Syracuse and Rochester.
Anderson replaced Doug Grose, another longtime semiconductor executive who worked at IBM and was previously CEO of GlobalFoundries.
