Micron has broken ground on a ¥1.5 trillion ($9.3 billion) factory expansion in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, with equipment installation scheduled for the second half of 2028 confirming the previous reports of a new HBM plant in Japan. The Japanese government is contributing up to ¥500 billion ($3 billion), bringing its total support for Micron to around ¥775 billion ($4.7 billion) to date. For the moment, Micron remains the only overseas DRAM manufacturer left on Japanese soil making it a point of strategic importance for Tokyo. The Hiroshima facility has a history with Micron. This is where the company produced its very first HBM wafer, while the site was acquired when it bought the bankrupt Japanese DRAM maker Elpida Memory back in 2013. The fab expansion will focus on advanced memory including HBM with around 80% of the required materials already sourced locally in Japan. The company is also building two leading-edge fabs in Boise, US, and broke ground earlier this year on a $100 billion production site near Syracuse, New York.

Separately, Micron and Ford announced today a long-term supply agreement covering memory and storage solutions for Ford's next-generation vehicle production. Micron is expanding automotive memory output and pointing to its Manassas, Virginia fab as part of the localized supply chain backing the deal.