Texas A&M Semiconductor Institute

Overview

A 300mm Research Cleanroom at RELLIS

TSI sits on undeveloped land behind the Research Integration Center at RELLIS, the 3,300-acre Texas A&M University System research campus in Bryan, about eight miles from the College Station main campus. The A&M System has put about $1.5B into RELLIS. Gov. Greg Abbott, Chancellor Glenn Hegar, Regent Jay Graham, Vice Chancellor for Research Joe Elabd and inaugural director Steve Putna broke ground on April 9, 2026.

The building holds a sealed Class 100 and Class 1000 cleanroom fitted with 300mm wafer tools, the wafer size used in leading commercial fabs. Labs cover process and tooling development, metrology, packaging, radio frequency (RF), photonics, and testing and evaluation, plus a skilled-trade lab for technician training. Hegar called it the most expensive project per square foot in university history.

TSI is the research anchor of the Brazos Valley semiconductor concentration, alongside AggieFab, the Center for Microdevices and Systems and the Cyclotron Institute in College Station.

Funding

Texas CHIPS Act Money Pays for Most of the Building

The 2023 Texas CHIPS Act (HB 5174) gave the A&M System $226.4M: about $200M for the TSI building and $26.4M for the Center for Microdevices and Systems. On February 5, 2026, the Board of Regents raised the TSI project budget to $205.5M and approved construction. The $161.8M building share comes from the state TSI building and equipment account and Permanent University Fund (PUF) debt proceeds; the balance covers tools.

The Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund (TSIF), created by the same act and run by the Texas CHIPS Office in the governor's office, reached about $948M in appropriations after lawmakers added $250M in June 2025.

Partners

Industry Partners and the Substrate Fab Proposal

TSI has about 10 faculty and staff and coordinates more than 100 semiconductor researchers across the A&M System. It works with or is in talks with more than a dozen companies and national labs. Existing A&M partnerships include Samsung, Tokyo Electron America and Cadence.

The university signed a memorandum of understanding with Substrate, a San Francisco chip startup weighing a fab called Project Factory One at RELLIS. That project depends on financing and incentives.

TSI's state counterpart is UT Austin's Texas Institute for Electronics (TIE), which received $552M from the Texas CHIPS Act and $840M from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Both run alongside China's third national chip fund, the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund (Big Fund III), set up in May 2024 with $47.5B. Abbott framed TSI as a step toward making Texas and the US "microchip independent."

Constraints

Equipment and Staffing Lag the Building

The building is due in early 2028, but tool purchases and staffing are funded separately within the $205.5M budget. Substrate's RELLIS fab, the commercial tenant that would use TSI's workforce pipeline most directly, has no committed financing.

Related coverage

Related Coverage

• Brazos Valley Semiconductor Concentration
• Substrate Project Factory One
• AggieFab Nanofabrication
• Center for Microdevices and Systems
• Texas A&M Cyclotron Institute
• UT Austin TIE