POCATELLO — One of the Pocatello area’s largest employers has a new owner.

The ON Semiconductor (now rebranded as simply, onsemi) manufacturing plant on the city’s east side has been purchased by LA Semiconductor, according to a news release from ATREG, the Seattle-based company that helped broker the deal.

“LA Semiconductor will run the fab as a pure-play, contract manufacturing foundry, with a long term wafer supply agreement in place, continuing to provide wafers to our partners onsemi,” said Mike Ward, Founder, president and CEO of LA Semiconductor. “There is an ongoing need for dedicated on-shore supply chain for many industries, including automotive, defense, aerospace and battery powered device manufacturers, requiring increased advanced chip content.”

LA Semiconductor has already installed some initial signage at the Pocatello ON Plant, and LA Semiconductor provided the following information about the Pocatello plant’s new owner:

About LA Semiconductor

Founded in 2021, LA Semiconductor is the newest U.S.-owned and fully operational pure-play semiconductor foundry for analog, mixed-signal and power products. As a result of the purchase of the Pocatello, Idaho fabrication plant from onsemi, LA Semiconductor now runs a 180nm capable pure-play, contract manufacturing semiconductor foundry.

Located on a 33-acre campus with over 50,000 square feet of cleanroom space and over 550,000 square feet of building space, the Pocatello, Idaho fab currently produces 0.35µm to 1.5µm analog CMOS, BCD, advanced discrete, and custom technologies.

LA Semiconductor currently employs approximately 350 local semiconductor experts and specialized operators in its clean-room manufacturing environment, and plans for growth with additional local talent to be well-positioned to serve the increasing demand for tailored domestic chip manufacturing. For more information, please visit: lasemiconductor.com.

ATREG released a statement from ON Semiconductor in its press release about the plant’s sale:

“In addition to our South Portland, Maine and our Oudenaarde, Belgium fabs, this is the third manufacturing asset disposition that ATREG has helped us with over the past 12 months,” explains Wei-Chung Wang, executive vice president, global manufacturing and operations for (ON Semiconductor). “This divestment is a continuation of (ON Semiconductor’s) fab-liter manufacturing strategy aimed at achieving a sustainable financial performance through upscaling capacity for products in our key markets of automotive and industrial.”