Nvidia has signed a $1.5 billion agreement with Amkor Technology to expand advanced chip packaging capacity in the United States, according to reports from CNBC TV18, Yahoo Finance, TechRepublic and Pulse 2.0.
Under the arrangement, Nvidia will make a prepayment to fund the expansion of Amkor's US advanced packaging operations, according to CNBC TV18, including capacity in Arizona. Amkor announced the arrangement as a $1.5 billion strategic partnership with Nvidia, according to Pulse 2.0. TechRepublic frames the agreement as a deal to expand US AI chip packaging.
Packaging is the less glamorous half of chipmaking. After silicon wafers are fabricated, the individual chips have to be cut, stacked, wired together and sealed into a finished component. For modern AI accelerators, that step is not an afterthought — it is where multiple pieces of silicon and stacks of high-bandwidth memory get fused into a single working part. A chip that cannot be packaged cannot ship.
Historically, most of that work has happened in Asia, which means chips fabricated on American soil have often still needed a long round trip before reaching customers. A prepayment structure — Nvidia paying up front rather than simply promising future orders — is a way of putting capital directly into a supplier's expansion, and it signals that Nvidia expects to need that capacity.
The sources here are headline-level, so the finer details are not specified: the reports summarized above do not lay out a timeline, a capacity target, or how the $1.5 billion is scheduled to be paid.
Why it matters: AI chips are among the most valuable manufactured goods in the world right now, and this deal moves a critical, often-overlooked step in making them closer to the customers who buy them.