It's not just Infineon - it's called the European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ESMC) and is a joint venture by TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, and NXP, with TSMC being the majority (70%) shareholder.

I've met one of the engineers designing the piping for that plant. Hardest project to date for him and mainly because TSMC was setting the pace.

> The company ... sought to capitalise on the massive AI investment boom

These chips are probably very useful and important, but I don't see what they have to do with AI. Does everything need to have the word AI these days?

Over time this program would be extended to include and bring back other critical industries and manufacturing capabilities, ultimately leading to citizens being able to choose their mandatory product to some extent and preference. For example it would be really cool to have a basic, but very robust and repairable sewing machine, 3D printer, ... which all aid survivability/adaptability of the collective in crisis, if widely distributed. These products would also set the baseline for quality and accessibility expectations.

Of course this goes hand in hand with a 4 day work week, so people can actually learn to appreciate their mandated crisis hobbies and indulge their family and friends doing so. And if all of this doesn't pan out economically, I would simply plunder and enslave a neighboring country <3

This is not directly related to AI or logical compute, so kvetching about GPUs, SoCs, TSMC, AI, and other buzzwords is dumb.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48557914

Infineon got €1bn of tax payer money to open the plant (~$1.1bn).