Dutch chip supplier ASM International to invest $324 million in new Arizona HQ

Dutch chip supplier ASM International (ASM) plans to invest 324 million dollars (about 300 million euros) in a new North American headquarters in Scottsdale in the state of Arizona. This was announced on Tuesday in a press release. The current North American headquarters is located in Phoenix, the capital of Arizona.

ASM International is headquartered in Almere and its subsidiaries design and manufacture equipment and process solutions to produce semiconductor devices for wafer processing and have facilities in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

According to Bloomberg, the company intends to hire 500 new employees for the new headquarters in Arizona. Bloomberg noted that ASM currently employs 800 people in Arizona. The company plans to continue hiring in 2024 despite the slowing growth in the chip industry. However, the company will not hire as many people as in previous years. “The big wave of hiring, you could say, is behind us,” the CEO of the company Benjamin Loh said in an interview.

Loh was visiting Arizona this week with a Dutch delegation, including outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte and outgoing Minister of Economic Affairs Micky Adriaansens. Together with Flemish Prime Minister Jan Jambon, they are on a trade mission in the United States. They were in Arizone on Monday and Tuesday and in San Fransisco on Wednesday.

"Already, some ten thousand people in the US are working for Dutch semicon companies. And the broader economic ties between the US and the Netherlands now account for one million US jobs. I’m sure that this number will only continue to grow," wrote Mark Rutte on X.