Intel and 3DGS support a $3.3 billion glass-substrate manufacturing facility in Odisha, India.

      The competition for who produces the world's chips is increasingly focused on the components of a chip that rarely receive attention. Recently, India has secured a notable victory in this area.

      Intel and 3D Glass Solutions have reached an agreement to construct a substrate-manufacturing facility worth approximately $3.3 billion in Odisha, as announced by the government on Friday.

      The memorandum of understanding, signed by the Odisha government, Intel Corporation, and 3DGS Inc., pertains to the establishment of an advanced-packaging glass-core substrate facility in the Bhubaneswar-Khurda region, which is expected to take five to six years to complete.

      India's electronics and IT minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, described this as one of the most significant commitments to high-tech manufacturing that the country has achieved.

      Substrates are the unremarkable yet crucial layer that enable modern chips to function. They serve as the engineered base upon which processors are mounted, directing power and signals between the silicon and the circuit board. As chip manufacturers reach the limits of shrinking transistors, the packaging surrounding the silicon has become critical for performance enhancements.

      The glass-core substrates, which are the focus of this plant, are regarded as an advancement over current organic materials, providing tighter and faster interconnections for more complex designs.

      The production goals for the plant reflect this ambition. According to the government, the facility is anticipated to generate approximately 70,000 glass substrates annually, around 50 million assembled units, and nearly 13,000 advanced 3D heterogeneous-integration modules, which are stacked multi-die packages that combine several chips into one.

      Additionally, it is projected to create over 1,800 direct high-skilled jobs, along with broader indirect employment opportunities.

      This agreement is part of a larger initiative, having been approved under the India Semiconductor Mission—a program through which New Delhi has committed billions in subsidies to bring chip manufacturing domestically. The official project cost is estimated at about ₹1,943 crore, with central fiscal support of roughly ₹799 crore and additional assistance from the state.

      The subsidy framework serves as the means: India is positioning itself to enter a supply chain that it has historically relied on imports to fulfill.

      For Intel, this move is a more focused investment compared to establishing a full fabrication plant, and it’s particularly significant given the company's broader contraction. Supporting a substrate facility allows Intel to establish a presence in a rapidly growing market and in the advanced packaging segment, an area where it has invested heavily without the tremendous costs associated with a leading-edge fabrication facility.

      This strategic rationale aligns with chip policies being implemented from Brussels to Washington. Both the EU’s Chips Act and the US CHIPS Act are efforts to localize a supply chain that the pandemic and geopolitical tensions have revealed to be overly concentrated, and India is now following a similar approach, though starting from a less advanced position.

      An MoU marks the beginning of the process rather than the completion of the plant, and the projected timeline of five to six years allows for potential delays. Nonetheless, the shift is clear: the landscape of chip production and the infrastructure they depend on is being reorganized, with Odisha now included in this evolving map.