The $28 Billion Promise Intel Made to Columbus
The Big Announcement
In January 2022, Governor Mike DeWine and Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger announced two semiconductor fabrication plants on 1,000 acres in Jersey Township outside New Albany. Gelsinger called it a future "mini-city." President Biden devoted several minutes of his State of the Union to it. The first factory was supposed to be producing chips by 2025, with workers earning an average of $135,000 a year.
$28B: Total Intel investment planned1,000Acres of Licking County farmland3,000Permanent jobs promised7,000Construction jobs at peak
Who Got the Land
The New Albany Company — co-founded by Les Wexner, Ohio's wealthiest man — quietly assembled the land before the public announcement, purchasing it for roughly $70,000 an acre then selling it to Intel for around $110,000. Farmers were often unaware of who was really buying. The majority of the site came from Heimerl Farms, a third-generation family operation. Broader Licking County farmland prices doubled from $20,000 to $45,000 an acre overnight, and home values jumped 30–40%. Amazon moved in next door, buying nearly 400 adjacent acres for $116 million in early 2023.
The Delay Timeline
2025 Original target — missed
2026 First revision — also missed
2027 Slipped again
2030–32 Current target
"A lot of bold promises were made about 3,000 employees and manufacturing by 2025. As it turns out, most of those were a little pie in the sky."
— Licking County Commissioner Tim Bubb
Why It Stalled
Three things hit at once. 🥇 First, Intel's own financial crisis: the company missed the AI chip wave almost entirely, losing ground to Nvidia, and has struggled to attract the outside foundry customers its Ohio fabs were designed to serve. 🥈 Second, CHIPS Act funding dried up — Intel has received $2.2 billion so far but submitted $850 million in reimbursement claims in 2025 that went unpaid after the administration changed. 🥉Third, basic construction headwinds — labor shortages, high interest rates — that have hit every megaproject in America. At peak, Intel expected 8,000 construction workers on site. As of August 2025, there were about 1,200.
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Stuck in the middle: Ohio pledged $300 million per fab in grants — but only if construction is completed by end of 2028. Intel has already spent $3.7 billion and can't easily walk away without repaying massive government incentives. Too entangled to quit, but not moving fast enough to win.
Why the CHIPS Act Matters
America's chip manufacturing share has collapsed
The U.S. produced nearly 40% of the world's semiconductors in 1990. Today it's 12%. The COVID pandemic — when car factories shut down for want of chips made in Taiwan — made that vulnerability impossible to ignore. The CHIPS and Science Act committed $52.7 billion to rebuild domestic manufacturing. Intel received the largest award: $7.86 billion. The logic is simple: the U.S. is one Taiwan Strait crisis away from losing access to the chips that run everything from iPhones to aircraft carriers.
What Happens Next
After 6.4 million work hours and 200,000 cubic yards of concrete, the structure is real — just years behind schedule. Three paths remain: Intel attracts foundry customers, funding resumes, and the fabs open around 2030–31. Or construction crawls and the timeline slips further. Or, as State Senator Bill DeMora put it: "Intel is dead. We're never going to see Intel."
The wild card: even if Intel falters, the land is cleared and the infrastructure is built. Someone builds a chip factory there. Whether the sign on the door says Intel or not, central Ohio may still get its Silicon Heartland — it's just running about five years late.