Intel Expects Arizona Fab 62 to Open by End-2028

Intel has given a date for its next big American factory. Tool installation is now under way at Fab 62 in Arizona, and the company expects operations to begin by the end of 2028, according to an opinion piece by Naga Chandrasekaran, executive vice president and chief technology and operations officer of Intel Foundry.

“Construction and tool installation at Fab 62 are now fully underway,” he wrote. The plant will be Intel’s sixth high-volume manufacturing fab at its Ocotillo campus.

What Intel did not say

The piece leaves the most commercially important questions open. Intel has not said which process node Fab 62 will run, how many wafers it will handle or how much it will cost, Tom’s Hardware notes. Its neighbour, Fab 52, has been designated for Intel 18A, but Fab 62 has not been assigned a node. Intel also says operations will “begin” by the end of 2028, which is not the same as giving a date for high-volume production.

In Ohio, Chandrasekaran reported that “the first major structural truss has been installed on the first fab in New Albany”. He called it a significant step, but gave no new schedule for when that fab will open, nor its node or capacity.

The wider pitch

The article is as much an argument for US chipmaking as an update. Chandrasekaran cites Semiconductor Industry Association figures showing the US share of chip manufacturing fell from 37% to 10% between 1990 and 2022. He draws a line between technology “made in America” and technology that is “truly American-made”, meaning designed through US research as well as built there.

He points to Intel 18A, with its RibbonFET transistors and PowerVia backside power, which went into high-volume manufacturing in 2025. He also says Intel was the first in the industry to install a commercial High NA EUV lithography machine, in Oregon, and the first to integrate one into high-volume manufacturing. The piece runs through Intel’s other US sites: research in Oregon, advanced packaging in Arizona and New Mexico, and a new mask-making plant on which work began in Santa Clara, California, earlier this year. He also highlights EMIB-T, an advanced packaging technology that Intel says will enable increasingly complex systems.

Intel says it works with more than 4,500 suppliers in 49 states, generating more than $29bn a year in domestic spending. These are the company’s own figures. Chandrasekaran says Intel and its suppliers support a semiconductor corridor connecting hundreds of thousands of people across five states, and the piece closes with a pitch for Intel Careers.

Fab 62’s real test is not its opening date but what it is built to make. Intel will need to answer that question long before the end of 2028.