The Texas Construction News staff writer
SHERMAN — Coherent Corp. has signed a letter of intent to receive up to $50 million in direct funding under the federal CHIPS and Science Act to expand its semiconductor manufacturing facility in Sherman, Texas.
The expansion will bolster the production of 6-inch Indium Phosphide (InP) photonic devices, which are essential for enabling high-speed data transmission and overcoming data movement bottlenecks within advanced AI data centers and telecommunications networks.
- Production scaling: The Sherman facility is currently the world’s first and largest high-volume 6-inch InP manufacturing platform. The investment will double the site’s manufacturing production space and quadruple wafer production capacity by adding advanced wafer fabrication equipment and cleanroom capacity.
- Job creation: Upon completion, the expansion is expected to create more than 1,000 jobs, including 550 direct advanced manufacturing, engineering, and technical roles.
- Strategic partnerships: The project strengthens Coherent’s long-standing partnership with NVIDIA, which relies on high-performance optical interconnect technologies to connect millions of GPUs for scalable AI infrastructure.
The federal CHIPS award builds upon approximately $20 million in prior support from the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund and the Sherman Economic Development Corporation.
