Micron breaks ground on humungous NY DRAM fab after beating bats and tree huggers

Micron broke snowy winter ground in New York on Friday to begin building a chip fab that promises to bring up to 50,000 jobs and much-needed computer memory production to US shores, as the AI boom continues to push memory prices up. The company’s stock surged on the news that shovels had been put to work on the facility first announced in 2022, which had been bedeviled by environmental delays. The megafab - which would displace 500 acres of woods and wetlands, as well as two endangered species of bats - is scheduled to begin producing DRAM chips by 2030. Micron said it will create 1,216 acres of off-site bat habitat including maternity roosts to mitigate the potential damage its fab will cause to the Indiana and northern long-eared bat populations, as well as 628 acres of land to offset impacts to the sedge wren, short-eared owl, and northern harrier bird populations. Marking the largest private investment in New York state history, the $100 billion project will take 20 years to complete and will eventually bring four fabs, each spanning roughly 1.2 million square feet, to the 1,377-acre White Pine Commerce Park site in Clay, NY. The global technology component supply chain is bracing for higher prices in 2026 amid an AI-driven chip famine that analysts at IDC told The Register could stretch into 2027 as production of memory gets pushed towards higher value AI infrastructure products and away from cheaper consumer goods. While Micron’s first two fabs at the New York facility are set to come online in 2030, the others are not scheduled to be finished until 2041. The company claims the buildout would increase US-based DRAM production twelvefold over the next two decades. Micron said the completed fabs will employ 9,000 workers in three shifts, 24 hours per day. The remaining 40,000 jobs that Micron touts will come over 20 years and include “suppliers, contractors, and other supporting roles.” Micron ditches consumer memory brand Crucial to chase AI riches Micron says memory shortages are here for the foreseeable future The $100B memory war: Inside the battle for AI's future Micron says memory shortages are here for the foreseeable future In April 2024, Micron won $6.1 billion in federal funding through the CHIPS and Science Act to help cover its fab expansion plans. That includes both the New York plant and an R&D facility in Boise, Idaho. At the time it was announced, Micron planned for a 2024 groundbreaking. However, the project's scale triggered a US Army Corps of Engineers permitting process covering the permanent loss of 193.38 acres of federally regulated wetlands and 6,283 linear feet of streams and ditches. In its October 2025 environmental analysis, Micron said that by 2030, it would have constructed 504.54 acres of wetlands, compared with 104.01 acres of wetlands impacted by Phase 1 construction activities. Micron also estimates that by the time the project is complete, greenhouse-gas sequestration from preserved and constructed wetlands would more than triple the losses associated with the full buildout of the campus. ®