Two years ago, Intel Corporation and the Italian Government initiated negotiations over the " enabling " of a new state-of-the-art back-end manufacturing facility—a potential investment of up to 4.5 billion euros was mentioned at the time. Italy's chipmaking fund was put together in order to attract several big semiconductor firms , but Team Blue appeared to be the primary target. This week, Minister Adolfo Urso confirmed to media outlets that Intel had: "given up or postponed its investments in France and Italy, compared with others that it plans in Germany ." Intel has not commented on this announcement according to a Reuters report —a spokesperson declined to make a statement.
Italy's Business Minister stated that he will welcome a continuation of negotiations, if Intel leadership chooses to diversify its construction portfolio outside of Germany: "if it decides to complete those projects, we are still here." His nation is set to receive further investments, following a recent announcement from Silicon Box—the Singapore-headquartered advanced semiconductor packaging company has signed an up to €3.2 billion deal. Their new Italian facility will: "enable next generation applications in artificial intelligence (AI), high performance computing (HPC)," and other segments. Urso reckons that "there will be others in coming months." He also added that a ministry task force had conducted talks with unnamed Taiwanese groups.