This is the company's largest investment to date to expand its silicon carbide and GaN capacity in the silicon carbide business. Once completed in 2024, the facility will substantially increase the company's silicon carbide production capacity and wafer manufacturing capacity, enabling high-bandwidth semiconductor solutions that support the dramatic technological changes underway in the automotive, communications, and industrial markets.
“We continue to see strong interest from the automotive and communications infrastructure sectors in harnessing the benefits of silicon carbide to drive innovation. However, demand for silicon carbide has long outpaced available supply. Today, we are announcing our largest ever investment in production to dramatically increase this supply and help customers bring transformative products and services to market,” said Gregg Lowe, CEO of Cree. “This investment in equipment, infrastructure, and manpower is capable of increasing our silicon carbide wafer manufacturing capacity by up to 30 times and our material production by up to 30 times compared to Q1 2017, when we began the first phase of capacity expansion. We believe this will enable us to meet the anticipated growth in demand for Wolfspeed silicon carbide devices and materials over the next five years and beyond.”.
