Ever Onward Podcast

Scott Gatzemeier: Micron's $15 Billion Boise Expansion | Ever Onward - Ep. 37

• Ahlquist. • Season 1 • Episode 37

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Imagine starting your career as an intern and eventually leading a project so massive it’s visible for miles. In our latest episode, we sit down with Scott Gatzemeier, a 27-year veteran of Micron, who has done just that. Scott shares his incredible journey, from developing NAND products in Utah to spearheading Micron's $15 billion dollar Boise campus expansion. With 22 cranes on-site and plans to nearly double the campus size, Scott provides an insider’s look at this monumental project and the innovation driving Micron’s future.

As we explore Micron's evolution in the semiconductor industry, we trace its journey from a Boise basement to a global powerhouse. We dive into the economic impact of high-tech companies like Micron on local communities, highlighting job creation, infrastructure improvements, and educational opportunities. Scott reflects on the benefits of such developments for Boise and beyond, painting an exciting picture of Micron's future growth and milestones. This episode is packed with insights into technology, economic development, and the transformative power of innovation in our communities.

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Speaker 1:

We're really excited today to introduce Scott Gatzmeier on the Ever Onward podcast. Scott Gatzmeier has 27 years of service at Micron, based here out of Boise, idaho. He has a bachelor's degree of science in electrical engineering from the University of North Dakota. He started as an intern here in the 90s at Micron and has been with them ever since since 1997. The 90s at Micron and has been with them ever since since 1997. In 2006, scott joined IM Flash where he helped the team grow that segment of the market and spent some time in Utah with their fab, which is super interesting because of what's going on here. He's now here and leads the Micron team in the Treasure Valley with the site selection and now expansion of the FAB here.

Speaker 1:

We're really excited to get caught up with Scott and hear what's going on with Micron and get an update on the impact to Idaho and to the United States really with this FAB out here in the West. Prior to hearing from Scott today, we have one of our partners here at Alquiston, corey Hall, who runs our construction company. It's always great to spend time with Corey Hall and talk about roping and construction. So first, corey Hall. What's up, cowboy?

Speaker 2:

Not much Liar.

Speaker 1:

In between roping and building stuff.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we've been busy, you have been busy.

Speaker 1:

You got me staying late here on Wednesday. I know I was going to say this is the latest you've been busy.

Speaker 3:

You have been busy. You got me staying late here on.

Speaker 1:

Wednesday. I know I was going to say this is the latest you've been at. Hey, in all fairness, you guys get here like two hours before everybody.

Speaker 2:

That's a fact.

Speaker 1:

Maybe three hours before everybody Almost on overtime. In fairness as well. On Fridays it's a ghost town in the construction department.

Speaker 2:

It gets pretty lonely here Friday afternoon.

Speaker 1:

I'm not going to lie. I'm not tracking hours. These guys kill it. Any roping updates, We'll do an Alquist update every time with you. But have you actually caught a cow yet in a competition?

Speaker 2:

No, I've caught in a competition. Every time they start saying, oh man, if you catch this one, you're gonna win some money, then I immediately miss right after that. So we're trying to work on that. Aren't you getting a new horse? Um, I hope so, if I can find one. I'm looking at one tomorrow, so we'll see fingers crossed how's dakota?

Speaker 1:

I haven't seen him.

Speaker 2:

He's doing good he's been really busy too. We got with all theV stuff, with the remodels and some of those things.

Speaker 1:

All right, you're going to shift me over to work, so you've got a lot going on with DMV right now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know DMV great bunch of guys. We actually have three projects right now and then in the entitlement design phase of a couple more things. So that's been a really exciting uh partnership to have with those guys and, um, there's a lot going on right now.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. And then the one other thing I wanted to hit today was, um, a lot of attention to the house of the little pig.

Speaker 2:

So it's down in Southeast Boise, um, right on the river Amazing setting, right, yeah, it's uh, talk about about that, talk about that and talk about greg strimple and yeah, so um working with the owner, greg strimple and his wife carrie on that um, it's actually been a really really fun project to be on um just through the design phase and and they're really in tune and care about the you know the interior finishes and and definitely a vision there of how they want it to look it's a little bit of history on them.

Speaker 1:

They're owners of the Lively downtown which people have been there? Great restaurant, downtown Boise, and this will be their second concept with Chef Edward Yep. And does he come spend any time at the construction site?

Speaker 2:

I haven't met him or seen him on the construction site. Greg shows up, I think, at least once or twice a week.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if Strumple doesn't listen to our podcast, I'm sure.

Speaker 2:

He's too busy for that. He's too busy for that.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to text him and tell him to tune in. He shows up in his flip-flops, right, yep.

Speaker 2:

So the other day he shows up. Well, I was actually covering the job for Tanner Strumper, our superintendent, and Greg shows up in his flip-flops. I'm like, hey man, you know, osha.

Speaker 1:

You can't really do that.

Speaker 2:

I guarantee.

Speaker 1:

Greg Strumple doesn't even know that steel-toed shoes exist in the world. That's like what? Why would you ever have steel-toed?

Speaker 2:

boots, Greg. He marches to the beat of his own drum for sure he's awesome, it's going to be great.

Speaker 1:

But it does bring me to a point, cory. So we do build the suits. You do third-party work now. So I think when we started the construction company, our construction company, the deal was, hey, let's just mostly do our own stuff, but you're starting to do outside stuff. So, uh, people have projects going on. Um, we're bidding on third-party work and you guys have an amazing team.

Speaker 2:

That's that's getting after it yeah, I think, uh, that'll be one of the real exciting things as we move forward here being able to target, you know, projects that aren't necessarily, you know we're not the developer on and go do third-party work, and you know especially things that are kind of right here in the valley and in our backyard, so it'll be fun to try to go chase some of that stuff.

Speaker 1:

That's great, hey. Because you stayed so late, you got time for a couple more yeah.

Speaker 2:

I'm ready. I brought a sleeping bag.

Speaker 1:

Did the construction employees win a golf tournament last week?

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1:

Can we give a little bit of a shout-out here?

Speaker 2:

Uh-huh, they won the ESI Cares Golf Tournament.

Speaker 1:

I know there's some ESI people turning in right now I've heard I've seen Tanner over at Topgolf and he can swing golf club. I was shocked that Holden. I thought he was a wrestler.

Speaker 2:

Well, so we have a pretty kind of an org chart in our office. Tanner, he's way out there at the top. As far as golf goes, he played college golf, so I don't even know if he counts no-transcript.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, he's going to be very disappointed in me when he hears this, but that shocked me.

Speaker 2:

And then so Chris Yule was on the team too, and Chris, he has his moments.

Speaker 1:

I think he got closest to it. I heard Scott is.

Speaker 2:

Scott is my buddy, but damn, he ain't much of a golfer.

Speaker 1:

So those guys text me a picture of the score it was like a 58 or something in Scramble right and there's a picture of them and I'm like they used 100% of Tanner's shots. And then I hear that Holden actually came through.

Speaker 2:

So apparently Chris got closest to the pin. I think he must have blacked out for like five minutes. Hey, the bottom line is those guys are great guys.

Speaker 1:

You've got an incredible team over there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they're all doing great. Just like we talked about the DMV stuff between Chris and Dakota and Mark and Michael, between the four of those guys they're kind of tackling all those projects and then you get Kyle and Tanner down at the House of the Pig.

Speaker 1:

Is it House of the Little Pig or House of the Pig?

Speaker 2:

I think it's House of the Little Pig.

Speaker 1:

Okay, yeah, I didn't want to. I say it like 20 times a day.

Speaker 2:

So I have to start shortening it up.

Speaker 1:

I do not want Greg Shrimple mad at me. House of the Little Pig. House of the Little Pig. Okay, got it All right.

Speaker 2:

Hey, thanks for staying late. Yep, this is what it looks like at 6 o'clock am every day.

Speaker 1:

This is what it looks like at 6 pm. All right, thanks, corey. All right, thanks, scott. Thank you for coming on today.

Speaker 1:

Yeah thanks for having me. This is gonna be great, um, appreciate you. We already got talking a little bit about all the exciting things going on at micron, but, um, it's gonna be good to have you on here, because I know I I still get questions from a lot of people inside and outside the state of idaho, which is this is a ginormous investment yeah, if you're driving north on the interstate, as you come into Boise down that hill and you see 22 cranes, we're hard to miss right now and from the air right now I flew in from Coeur d'Alene last night and we flew right over it and you look out and you're just like, this is something else.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean our campus. Right now we've got over 2,000 acres out there, but our buildings sit on about 450 acres is what we take up. This new expansion, we're going to add an additional 420 acres, so almost double the size of our campus. It's amazing. It's a humbling project to be a part of.

Speaker 1:

Well, I can't wait to ask you a little bit more about that. But I'm honest, like we get a little bio before we do a podcast and they send it over to me and it said you've been there 27 years and I'm like I call Holt and I'm like there's no way.

Speaker 3:

Scott's that old, so you've been there 27 years. Yeah, I started as an intern Um so did you grow up in Boise. I grew up in Montana.

Speaker 1:

Montana.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so it was pretty close. And then I went to college at the university of North Dakota, got a swimming scholarship to go there, so I swam for four years out there.

Speaker 1:

And what city is that in?

Speaker 3:

Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Speaker 1:

Grand Forks. Yeah, cold, really cold, believe it or not, I've been there.

Speaker 3:

Oh, have you, Okay yeah.

Speaker 1:

Long story but a beautiful because of the really nice facilities right.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, wonderful facilities, huge aviation programs. Yes, a lot of pilots come out of there.

Speaker 1:

And because North Dakota has so much oil and whatever, the state schools are super well-funded, oh yeah.

Speaker 3:

No, beautiful campus. I had a great time out there. It was amazing, Tons of fun. And then one of my engineering buddies was like hey, you know, this is kind of close to Montana, you should check these guys out. Because Micron was coming out to interview, so interviewed and came out to Boise that summer and learned how to water ski up in Lucky Peak, would go mountain biking up in the foothills downtown so walkable, beautiful. Just fell in love with Boise and with Micron because the work was as much work as you wanted to do, learn as much as you could, go as fast as you wanted to go.

Speaker 1:

So have you been based here the whole time?

Speaker 3:

No, I went down to Utah for nine years so worked here for about the first nine years and was on our NAND products, so our non-volatile memory that goes in like your SSDs or holds all the storage for your phones and other things like that. And then we started up this joint venture with Intel IAM Flash. So I went down to Utah we were right down there in Lehigh Utah, so lived in Alpine, um.

Speaker 1:

So my wife was another great place, oh, another girl, those mountains are unbelievable.

Speaker 3:

The outdoor activity in Utah, you can't beat it. Did you like Alpine? Yeah, I almost.

Speaker 1:

I almost lived there, so out of residency, it's a. It's a crazy story. Steve young, the quarterback's brother, mike young uh, is an er doc in alpine.

Speaker 3:

Oh amazing at timpanogos hospital right there yep.

Speaker 1:

So when I was coming out and interviewing all over the place of where I was going to go, I had actually a contract in my hand from them and we had looked at a lot in alpine to buy and I'm like this is going to be the best place. And then, you know, long story short, my buddy calls me. He's like hey, you got to come to Boise yeah but, but it's. It's a great place, so I've watched it.

Speaker 2:

It's changed a lot because at the time.

Speaker 1:

I mean, that was just a little, a little town, and now it's kind of all grown together well, I think the growth that we did down there yeah, kind of drove that so for sure so when we first went down there, so I mean I think I was like employee number six or something.

Speaker 3:

They wanted me to go and it was super exciting. So I mean it was a two-lane highway down there. That plant Micron actually built in 1995, never finished it, yep, and then 2006, we went down there to finish it and build it up.

Speaker 3:

And then that's when they added the two bypass lanes, made it a two-lane highway with a turn lane all the way down, multiple lights, you started seeing adobe comes in adobe came in after, and then they turned it into silicon slopes yeah and so, micron, you know that first fab they built there and then when we built it out with intel kind of built all that up right. But yeah, alpine's gorgeous, is unbelievable like.

Speaker 1:

So people, people always ask, like what is the impact? And we're going to get into that, but I think it's fascinating that you were down there and watched that all change. Put in an order of magnitude what that facility is going to be and what's going on right now here.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so what we're building now and bringing manufacturing back, it's going to be four times as big as what we built down there in Utah, so 600,000 square feet. I mean the building itself will be over 5 million square feet by the time we fit it, because the fab itself is 600,000 square feet. But you've got what we call a dirty sub-fab, then a clean sub-fab, the fab and then an interstitial area. So a four-story hall clean subfab, the fab, and then an interstitial area, so four stories tall. The building will be about 180 feet tall because we're building the dirty subfab, which is the first floor, if you will, on grade, and then on the outside of that you've got your HPM building we call it hazardous process materials You've got your central utilities buildings. You've got your data center for the fab I mean it's wastewater treatment all of those buildings. So it's just absolutely massive.

Speaker 1:

It's amazing, how's it going?

Speaker 3:

It's going well. I mean, construction projects are always a challenge and in this market I'm sure you're well aware of the challenges. But we're pouring concrete like crazy. You, you know, 12,000 cubic yards a week. It's a six foot mat slab with, you know, reinforced rebar all the way throughout it. Um, and we've started going vertical here for about the last six, eight weeks, um, and so we're putting up all those precast elements. Uh, incredibly exciting to see those. Those come in. Last week we had a record precast week and we're going to break that record again this week. And so it just kind of builds. We have 22 cranes out there right now. We put our first truss up and then our box trusses, which are absolutely massive, are being assembled in the yard and coatings are going on those as we speak and getting ready to put in place as well. So we'll be weather tight on a portion of the building by the end of October and then we'll continue to build it out.

Speaker 1:

I remember seeing your construction schedule the first time. It's pretty aggressive. You look at it for as massive as this is from start time to end time, your scheduled completion is when.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we're going to start rolling in equipment at the end of 25. That's impressive.

Speaker 1:

And that's when kind of the first phase will be done. That is impressive.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's very aggressive and you know you look at projects of this scale. You've got a time to get output out of it because you've got this huge capital outlay. So time to revenue is incredibly important, and so that's why we've really got to build quick.

Speaker 1:

So talk. Well, can we rewind a little bit? Yeah, absolutely I knew I jump all over with you. Talk us through a little bit about the origin, this great Idaho company. It starts here, yeah, and just talk about that. And then how the memory industry has changed over time, because you're really competing with nations, yeah, and then this chip tax comes through and then a wafer and kind of how all this works and you're really bringing manufacturing back to where it began, right.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, micron was founded here in the late 70s by Joe and Ward Parkinson and they kind of saw this DRAM thing, got ahead of it and founded it in a basement and they were first a design shop, so they were designing these products. Then they got wrapped up with, you know, simplot and a bunch of others and hey, let's build a fab, you know. And so they built one of the first fabs and came out with a product that really disrupted the market. What they were able to build, and in Boise, idaho, of all places, right, I think the joke is Simplot made more money on micron chips than he did potato chips. But from there, you know, we continue to build and build and grow. And I joined Micron in 1997, and we were just Boise, idaho, and it was really neat because it was kind of us against the world.

Speaker 3:

And you mentioned nations like Toshiba at the time was Japan's kind of national champion in memory, and memory is a commodity. We're starting to see that change quite a bit with artificial intelligence and I'll talk about that in a little bit. But it used to be very cyclical, very volatile, and so these large companies would get in trouble and then they would get incentives from their governments to go do this, and other governments would decide to get into the industry. And so you've watched, like Japan take a rise for a little bit through incentives, then South Korea kind of, when they wanted to do everything that Japan was doing. They created Samsung and Hynix, who are still with us today, and then Taiwan decided that they wanted to get into memory manufacturing as well, and then after that now China has decided they want to get into it. So that growth story is important because at Micron one of the first things after I got there as a little intern that happened that really changed the game for us, was acquired Texas Instruments, dram manufacturing, and so we went from just Boise, idaho, to global overnight. We acquired assets in Singapore, japan to global overnight. We acquired assets in Singapore, japan and Italy, right. And so that was our first far away. And then the way Steve Appleton and Mark Durkin kind of visionaries they saw that if you bought these distressed assets, you know you would consolidate the industry by taking out a player and hopefully the industry would become healthier. So then you know, one of our next acquisitions was a Dominion fab in Virginia, which was great, and then we acquired Rexchip in Elpida acquired Comandos assets in Taiwan, and so, if you look at all, the Japanese DRAM is now Micron In Taiwan we're the only memory manufacturer as well and then in Singapore, that's where we have our NAND business.

Speaker 3:

So you know, when I joined Micron, we were, I think, a little less than 8,000 people here in just Boise, idaho, and now Micron's 44,000 team members globally. You know, one of the largest semiconductor companies in the world, leading the industry in DRAM and NAND technology, but we've really seen no growth here in the US and in fact, in 2010, we shut down manufacturing in Boise, and so right now, we just do all of our research. I say, just do. It's amazing what we do out there Research and development and our products groups are all out there. It's a band for the world, but we don't do out there Research and development and our products groups are all out there and it's banned for the world, but we don't do any manufacturing. And you know we're still about 8,000 people or so out at that site.

Speaker 3:

And so now having the opportunity to bring manufacturing back to Boise, idaho, is really a culmination of a couple of things. First, the industry's consolidated down to three DRAM players Micron, hynix and Samsung. There's some other startups, but really I mean I think 98% of the market shares by those big three. So there's nobody else to consolidate and the demand for our products continues to grow and one of the things that's really driving that is artificial intelligence and we have a product high bandwidth memory hbm, you were mentioned, yeah, so um for those watching on youtube and on our clips.

Speaker 3:

So hbm 3e yep, yeah, so that's our latest product offering and it's 30% more energy efficient than other offerings on the market. It's faster, higher bandwidth, and so it's an unbelievable product for us. And I think with AI, a lot of people have heard about NVIDIA and some of these others taken off. Well, if you take the NVIDIA, it's called the H100 or H200 chip that they have, surrounding that would be six or eight of these high bandwidth memory stacks that we call them, and inside of those are eight DRAM chips. So actually around that you know, single NVIDIA chip are 64 micron chips. Yeah, so we actually have more silicon in that final offering than NVIDIA does, if you look at it. So that's, you know, incredibly exciting and driving demand for that business.

Speaker 1:

Gosh, there's so many things. I want to talk a little bit about landing this fab here. I want to make sure we get back to that, but this AI thing is unbelievable, right. So it's the computing power that it's going to need, and there was a statistic Someone from your group spoke and I should remember his name, but he gave a talk at one of the business things here that I was at and was on a panel on and they showed the amount of memory, the storage, the gigabytes of memory, and what's happening to it. Because of all this, it's explosion right of growth.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, this is what I tell kids right now there's never been a better time to get into our industry. Yeah, and I got in before the dot-com boom, right, right. So you know, if you look all the way back, it's pretty crazy and just lucky when you join a growing organization, growing company, and you can grow your career with it. But the dot-com boom, then you had mobile phones take off, then you had cloud compute. I think AI is going to be bigger than all of those combined and it's really a huge disruption in the compute platform. So if you look at and when I say compute, it's like the CPU, the processor. So if you think back, the classic 46 PC was Intel had really a stranglehold on that right, and now you're seeing a huge fracture in it with GPUs, so graphic processor units, which used to be just your video card on the computer. But now what they found is they had to do huge movements of data right in more what we call memory-centric compute, so they're able to move that data in and out.

Speaker 3:

Well, if you look at artificial intelligence, when you're training, you're doing other things like that. It's all about the data and the amount of information that you're able to process, not necessarily so much compute power. And so that's why you're seeing kind of two things happen to it One, tsmc so Taiwan Semiconductor Company, kind of two things happen to it. One, tsmc so Taiwan Summit Conductor Company is a foundry that enables NVIDIA, amd, google, microsoft and others who don't have fabs to make design chips and then make them at TSMC Huge right. So now, if you look at the moat or the barrier to entry to build your own processors, it's lower because you can use a foundry to go do that.

Speaker 3:

So then all of these different types of applications are coming in and making that memory more central to that, and that's why memory is becoming much less of a commodity, because now it's becoming more customized to that processor. And it's all because of artificial intelligence and all that large training data sets, requiring data, which is memory, to be more central and play a bigger role. And so that's why, for us, it's incredibly exciting If you think about autonomous driving vehicles we call those data centers on wheels the amount of compute power that's going to have to be there, the amount of memory that's going to have to be there, real time from all those sensors around your car pulling everything in talking to the cars next to you, you know, when we get to full autonomous driving. And then even the NAND that would be required for like a black box recorder in case there was an accident. I mean these are all things that are incredible strong drivers.

Speaker 1:

That's just one segment of the world. Right, I know one segment.

Speaker 3:

The other one is that high-performance compute and all the data centers that are coming online. So I think you were talking about Jeff Binford, maybe last week when they were talking about the power.

Speaker 3:

Yes, yeah, so I actually went and spoke at the Senate well testified at the Senate Energy Committee hearing. So Senator Risch introduced me at that and then spoke about it. So Senator Risch introduced me at that and then spoke about it. But if you look at the power that each one of these data centers is going to draw, it's like 500 megawatts of power, and so these small modular nuclear reactors that they're working on at like INL and other places to get out. That's about what it would take to power one of those data centers. That's about what it would take to power our fab right, and it's also one of the reasons why our HBM product with lower power requirements. You know, if you think about it, our chips. It takes power to make them, but then there's their life cycle and so how do you reduce the power after they get out there? And so that's what we're constantly innovating on and driving that.

Speaker 1:

Before we forget, scott, you know, with Micron coming here, I think we're still, as a community and as a state, understanding what it means. Right, the impact, but talk about the process, because it wasn't a given right, yeah no.

Speaker 1:

Like you had everyone around the country wanting this and you were picking two locations correct. Talk us through that process Because I think people, it's a big deal for our people. And I'm going to give a little bit of background. I've been getting old now, so I think back to 20 years ago serving on all these boards and if you look at our wages in Idaho then and just jobs and keeping our people here, it was all we ever talked about. It really was. It was like how do we keep our kids here?

Speaker 1:

How do we create an economy where you will be able to, because everyone loves Idaho for lots of reasons, but you've got to be able to raise a family and have jobs and all this, and so it is a big deal.

Speaker 1:

It's like the dream of having an Idaho company stay here and bring all these jobs and all this technology and all of the other things that come here for them to be here, and sometimes I think we forget that we're like well, can't we just put up a wall and keep people out? No, because we can't afford to keep our own kids here with jobs. So then we go out and you, well, you go out and you select essentially RFPs from cities and states across the country and it wasn't given right.

Speaker 3:

No, not at all. It was a very interesting process. It's the first time I've been part of a site selection process and kind of led the team and we had some consultants come in and help us who were really good. They knew, like all the economic development agencies in the different locations they were able. So the first thing that you look for are kind of the site essentials, so 1,000 to 1,500 acres of land contiguous under control, and I was actually quite surprised at how many mega sites there are across the country that are going out. So if you think about a lot of them were going after battery plants or other things like that. It just so happens that there was a huge run on those while we were doing our site selection as well. Andps hadn't been announced when we started looking. It was not finalized, it was in the works. So I traveled around the country a lot. We looked at 18 sites in 11 different states and narrowed it down to a few front runners. But the site selection process also took a little bit longer than we thought because it took longer to get the chip spill passed. So went around, met with them. So the first thing was getting the land.

Speaker 3:

Then you look at the utilities. And is the land buildable, right? You know what's the geotech look like? You know wetlands, all those types of things? Then, okay, infrastructure, power infrastructure. What does that look like? Types of things? Then, okay, infrastructure, power infrastructure. What does that look like? And here in Idaho, you know, lisa, adam Richens, they've got Idaho Power is a great partner of ours and have been for a real, real long time, so they were an essential piece of landing the site here in Idaho. Then you look water, right, wastewater, natural gas, which we're in a great location where our plant is. There's a main line that runs through that. Here in Boise we sit on an aquifer over there that we recharge, and so that was really good for the water point of view. And then the wastewater we're building our own wastewater treatment plant and so went around all these other states. And you know, one of the things you talked about were jobs and keeping your kids and allowing them to have a future where they can afford to pay for their family, that stuff.

Speaker 3:

I mean I grew up in Montana. I would have loved to have stayed there, but there was no Micron, right, there was no place to go. I mean the technology that we get to work on here. What part of Montana, by the way, billings and Butte of Montana, by the way, billings and Butte Billings is great, yep, but I mean we have over 55,000 patents as a whole in the technology that gets developed over there. It's hard to explain. There are two places really in the US where there's that advanced amount of work going on right here, and then Hillsborough Oregon, with Intel, what they developed there, but I would say we're the only leading industry leading technology development right here. And then Hillsborough Oregon, you know, with Intel, what they developed there, but I would say we're the only leading industry-leading technology development right here in Boise, idaho.

Speaker 3:

So then you start looking at, okay, for Boise, what are the advantages and what do we have? Right, the mayor and her team worked with us very well. The governor and his team, you know, worked with us very well. Also, you know, bobby Joe was was up there. She's with the chamber now. Um, yeah, I mean they were tom keely. He's a great guy. They were great really trying to land us here. The thing is, idaho doesn't have as many tools as some of the other states, right, when you look at the way they're able to rebate. But idaho is also a lower regulation, lower cost, if you will, lower tax state. So those were pros going into it for Idaho. Then the other big pro was the co-location with our technology development. Being able to couple those two together was a big thing for us, and then we were able to get into New York right, and do that.

Speaker 1:

It's essentially Syracuse-ish right.

Speaker 3:

Syracuse, yeah, we're about eight miles north in Clay is what the town is, but yeah, Syracuse, isn't that one a little bit larger? Than this, the plant that we're going to build there will be four times the size of this over 20 years. So, yeah, when I look at it, I feel we landed just right. Getting the co-location with OneFab here in Idaho, adjacent to our existing operations and with the Idaho workforce, Because you look at, the workforce are you? You know, the who's going to do this is absolutely huge.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 3:

And when you look at the demographics in Idaho, boise has a large population base, but then you know it's four or five hours before you get to another large population base and so, um, being able to attract the labor, you know the skilled people that we need to build it and like the skilled trade labor challenge.

Speaker 1:

Talk to us a little bit about what is that and what does that max out in the number of jobs, just from your right now we have 2,000 micron jobs yeah and then for every job we create it'll create 10 other jobs in the state.

Speaker 3:

So you think about it. All of our suppliers, so you know we've got our equipment suppliers who will come first so tell asml, applied materials, lamb, they're all here but they'll all have to grow much, much larger to support this. And a lot of them, like TEL is going to, so Tokyo Electron, but TEL they're opening up an office in downtown Boise here in September in expanding and a lot of them are looking for warehouse space and other things like that. Now We'll have 4,500 skilled trades when we peak out, when we get into MEP, so mechanical, electrical piping, so a lot of those will be travelers coming in and then long-term we'll always be installing different equipment, de-installing equipment.

Speaker 3:

So a lot of those jobs, while they're not necessarily micro-owned jobs, they're in perpetuity, right. So we're one of those industries and I think this is why everybody was fighting for it so hard, because, like a hospital, it's just economic transactions that are local. So the money's not coming in, it's just being exchanged and, honestly, sometimes going out right when the jobs at Micron are manufacturing jobs. The money's coming in because you're sending exports out and that's where Idaho we actually have six times the national average of semiconductor jobs and we're ranked number two per capita in the country. And I mean that's predominantly because of the Micron site here.

Speaker 1:

It's absolutely massive and what the company's grown into yeah, talk a little bit about the challenges, because all the good part is, hey, on site here, it's absolutely massive in what the company's grown into. Yeah, talk a little bit about the challenges, because all the good part is, hey, already had it started here. Yeah, you had your R&D here. You had the land here. I think of water sovereignty power.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, just the excitement of all the leadership to have you here, what are some things that people may not realize are challenges, or still challenges you're facing, yeah yeah, I mean some of the challenges would be okay.

Speaker 3:

How do we build fast enough to get this done? How do we get the trades you know skilled trades to come in? So we're competing now to try and attract people from Washington, oregon, utah to come here to Boise to do that. So what type of housing? Where are they staying? How, in Utah, to come here to Boise to do that? So what type of housing, where are they staying? How does all that work? And then, with the latest run on housing in Boise and housing prices, how do we get people to want to move here?

Speaker 1:

It used to be a huge advantage, I remember recruiting, like for years as a physician here, I mean, it was always the easiest thing, right. You have all these kids looking, getting out of residency, looking for a place to go, and it's like, oh wow, I could come here and live here for this and that and the other, and it's, it's completely flipped on its head. Yeah, in fact I'm trying to think of who? Uh, just this week I was talking to someone oh, I know I was talking to someone about their, their, their moving from California and they were looking either here or it was another big city and they were like, oh, it's so much cheaper to live in the other big city. I'm like, really, is that really where we are? It's kind of flipped on its head to where it's not our leading thing. It's affordability. It's pretty expensive, right. A lot of that's inventory-driven, though, right.

Speaker 3:

It is inventory-driven. So that's why, you know, we're talking with different developers, trying to encourage them to develop. We're talking, you know, with all the state government officials. How do we open up more land, how do we open up more housing opportunities, how do we try to do those things and drive it and encourage it? And then also really trying to look at how do we open up, you know, the Treasure Valley more and kind of go to the south, because I think right now it's probably a shorter drive to Micron from Mountain Home than it is from Caldwell to Micron, for sure, right with traffic. So how do we start to develop that way and really grow the valley?

Speaker 1:

What a great like. You talk to people from around the country, though, and you're like what a great problem to have oh, I know what I mean yeah, I mean to live in this beautiful place we have, and have growth and people wanting to come here and wanting to live here and and just the I don't know the heritage we have and the I don't know the regulation and the ease of doing business. Yeah, I don't know. There's just a culture here. You've been here long enough that no wonder people want to come here.

Speaker 2:

Oh, and you're from Montana.

Speaker 1:

So there's this intermountain west.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's close.

Speaker 3:

Pacific Northwest feel that is just wonderful Easy. Yeah, was recruiting somebody last week and they came out here and they're like everybody is so nice, everybody I talked to is so nice, and that's what I don't know. Maybe you don't notice it when you grow up in Montana and here, but cause it's not changed. But yeah, I traveled the country and it's something that I mean.

Speaker 3:

Obviously we had the housing downturn in 2008 here and and saw a little bit of a rough time, but they're like went through the Rust Belt and looked at a lot of those communities because they want an anchored tenant like a Micron to come there, because they realize what those jobs mean and how one Micron job, a high-paying engineering job, drives multiple jobs. You know, like I said, 10 here is what our estimates are showing in the. You know, boise is what our estimates are showing in Boise. They know that that economic activity will spur development, will spur revitalization in the community and other things like that. And so when you travel around and you see what poverty does right, and then the homelessness and the dilapidation of infrastructure and what's, your way out if you don't have jobs.

Speaker 1:

This is where I go back to like 20 years ago, when we were serving on the United Way board and like going how do we attract people to come here? Last week I was in Reno. We're doing something over in Reno and you look at Reno. What would be Reno without what Tesla's doing?

Speaker 3:

over there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, without their battery factory. And then you've got they're doing their semi-truck factory over there right now that we were able to visit and tour. But like those are, like those blessings to a community, just I mean it's your kids, it's your education. It's everything that surrounds what makes it great. But it comes with investment and, to your point, dollars going, not not just trading hands, but coming into a community and, and I think, a little bit of hope, yeah, for community.

Speaker 3:

So if you look at our kids here in boise, right, if they take the hard math classes, if they take stem, they go engineering or you know, they've got a job right where they could stay right here.

Speaker 3:

They could go work for micron, they can go work for simplot, they can. I mean, there's lots of options for these kids when they're coming out and they can see it and they can tell Right now in Syracuse, you know their number one export is their, is their people right, their talent, and so how do you encourage kids to go get that art degree? And that's why we're investing in things like a STEAM school, so they add arts to STEM, and that's what. And then investing in the most museum of science and technology to put an exhibit on, you know, to educate kids and you know, because we're building out for 20 years, and so that's what? When you look at these transformative projects or these huge projects, you know kids who are in high school right now can go to micron and have a 30-year career like I did, you know and grow with the company, and that's what's, um, really cool about this that's awesome.

Speaker 1:

I uh, I'll tell you I wasn't going to bring this up, but I'm just. When you just brought that up, I was thinking about, um, the, the value over time, generationally, of having a company like this committed to a community, how big that is. But when we first moved here in the nineties, um, with we, we, we, we helped a family, essentially through our church, with a sub for Santa one time, and um, he worked at Micron.

Speaker 3:

Okay.

Speaker 1:

And um in touch and were able to help them over a 20-year period and I hadn't seen him. I happened to be able to help them when their first child was born and I ran into him like about three weeks ago just randomly at a restaurant and his dad is still there. Wow, they own their own house now, and and and he was just telling me and I watched him it was pretty emotional Cause he's like, yeah, my dad's doing great, he's still there and and and he's like it's been wonderful. And then did you hear what they're doing out there? And it's been. This is like these companies, especially one born here, like out of a basement here, what a story.

Speaker 1:

What an American story. To compete on the world stage at a time that manufacturing is leaving, bring it back, have it be here and to be part of it. You're 27 years, but this is going to be generational stuff for our kids.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and that's I mean. I get goosebumps when you tell a story like that. It's amazing and that's you know. You want to leave it better than you found it. I look at you know the Micron founders like Joe and Ward, and what they did. All I can say is thank you right Because. I get to do work on the most advanced technology on the planet, some of the hardest problems. Isn't it cool, right here in beautiful Boise, idaho, I think about those guys.

Speaker 1:

I'm serving on a little thing with Ward right now and I'm like it's just, it's so how would you like to be him? Sitting back and thinking like I'm in a basement, yeah, and figuring this stuff out. It's just, we're pretty lucky here. You think about Albertsons and what happened. You think about Simplot. You think about this.

Speaker 3:

Morrison-Canoonson, morrison-canoonson.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so many it's one after another, and even the HP guys, because I know when they came here that spun off a lot of bright thinkers that have done their own businesses. It's a pretty unique area because of the intellectual capital that either started here or came here or called this home, and then what they've given back.

Speaker 3:

Well, no, I just think I. I mean it's such a special place and if you look at everything we have here, I mean the boise river going right through the trail systems, bogus basin for how close it is, how good of a ski hill that is, and then two hours you can get to stanley and the sawtooth, unbelievable Sun Valley, which is obviously world-renowned, mccall, the whole. I mean it's just, oh, we're so lucky you do a lot of outdoor stuff right.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I enjoy it. So mountain biking, I did triathlons for a long time running and then I've got a raft, so I'll go raft like the main payette and that yeah it's awesome, what an a raft.

Speaker 1:

So go raft like the main payette and that and yeah, it's awesome, it's what an incredible place we live in. Yeah, I can't, I can't, it's just, it's great. Well, what, what should, uh, what should the community know about? What's next for you guys here and kind of what. What could they? Expect people listening to this. Yeah, what are some?

Speaker 3:

milestones that are coming up um. So biggest milestone we'll hit weather tight right. And then we're still actively hiring. We actually just went down to Utah and did a hiring blitz and we were talking we go to Boise State right, cwi, we've got apprenticeship programs, but we've never done just a hiring blitz open to the community in Boise. So we're going to talk about setting up one of those, so we'll get one of those going and then you'll continue to see more precast going up, more vertical um throughout the winter and year and then towards the end of 25 we'll be rolling equipment in and so it'll look completely different out there and then 26, we'll get our first production out and then we'll ramp it throughout the rest of the decade.

Speaker 1:

So just just amazing well, hey, thanks for coming on. I mean, it's been a while we've wanted. It's just such a big deal for the community and I'm just so dang glad it worked out and you're here with this fab and growing one of our legacy companies, idaho Companies, and appreciate all you do, scott. You're a big community guy and I appreciate all you do.

Speaker 3:

Thanks for being on. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been my pleasure, thanks.