All of this is made possible by investment firms funded by the Abu Dhabi. The result will be an AMD with a stronger balance sheet, as it will be getting an additional investment by the Mubadala Development Company (which will now own about 19.3 percent of the company), along with cash from the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) of Abu Dhabi, for shares in the new company. ATIC will now own 55.6 percent and AMD will own 44.4 percent of The Foundry Company.
The new Foundry Company plans to operate AMD's existing SOI line in Dresden, Germany where AMD currently makes most of its CPUs. It will then build out the second fab in Dresden, where it plans a 300 mm fab that will now do bulk silicon, the type of production used in most semiconductor manufacturing. Then the plan is to build a new factory at the Luther Forest Technology Campus in upstate New York, which executives said would employee 1,400 employees. The executives also talked about building more capacity in Abu Dhabi at some future time if necessary.
Going forward, this means that AMD is now a pure chip design company, which makes it very different from its competitor Intel, which both designs and manufactures chips. (Intel has lately been talking about how the advantages of having the two sides work together.) But overall, by giving AMD more financial flexibility and lower capital expenses going forward, it seems likely that the company will be able to focus more on chip design.