Sanjay Mehrotra: The AI Hardware Transformation

Michael Marks: Hi, everyone. This is the TechSurge Deep Tech podcast presented by Celesta Capital. Each episode, we spotlight issues and voices at the intersection of emerging technologies, company building, and venture investment. I'm Michael Marks, founding managing partner at Celesta. Today, we are pleased to welcome Sanjay Mehrotra, president and CEO of Micron.

Micron is of course one of the world's largest manufacturers of advanced memory and storage systems with sites around the globe and with its headquarters in Boise, Idaho. I had the pleasure of getting to know Sanjay and working closely with him during his time at SanDisk, where he was a co founder and served as president and CEO, helping lead the company from a startup to a 14 billion valuation and a successful sale.

So Sanjay, thank you so much for joining us today.

‍Sanjay Mehrotra: Michael, it's really great to be here. I have known you, worked with you for a couple of decades now and excited to be,  here sharing our thoughts on what's happening in the world today. And before I begin, Michael, I just wanted to highlight that, you know, that I've been a small investor in Celesta, but today when I'm here with you, I am actually,  here in my capacity as the CEO of Micron, and,  really, this is about Micron and our industry today.

I would just add that, of course, in the course of the discussions, there may be some forward looking statements and anybody listening should always understand the risk factors associated with it, which are, of course, in Micron's SEC filings, which we make from time to time.

‍Michael Marks: Of course. Thanks for that.

And, you know, having run a public company myself for many years, I know how tricky this can, this can be. So hopefully we won't get into any trouble here. Okay. So look, we've known each other for a long time and you've had a remarkable career and this is as good a place as any to start. You're one of the people that we, we, we together know a lot of here in the Valley of people who start with small business and, and found something and then eventually, you know, wind up being famous like Jensen Wang or other friends.

Um, maybe you could just talk about that journey, how you started at SanDisk and just talk us through how you got to become the CEO there. And, and then what your journey was over to Micron. and so on.

‍Sanjay Mehrotra: You know, journey at SanDisk, amazing, um, journey over 28 years,  starting with founding of the company, three immigrants here in Silicon Valley, you know, one from Israel, Elie Harari, our lead founder and a great mentor to me over my journey at SanDisk and Jack Yuan and myself.

And, you know, starting with the idea of the using, um, imperfect memory at the time, which was flash in the labs and converting it into essentially gold in terms of system level solutions. And this was absolutely breakthrough, extremely differentiated. Addressing large markets, markets that we didn't even know about and taking it from digital cameras to mobile phones, to solid state drives, retail products, as well as OEM products, and, becoming a world leader in flash technology.

That was an amazing journey there at SanDisk and really an amazing team as well. And, you know, being at a startup from the very beginning, being there for 28 years, knowing everybody and kind of knowing all aspects of the business and then coming into Micron, was certainly a different experience and exciting challenge for me when I decided to join Micron, because I looked at Micron always, even when I, I was a competitor at SanDisk that Micron was a national treasure.

It had tremendous. capabilities and joining a large scale company with deep rooted culture and essentially parachuting in as the CEO. Of course, you know, you have butterflies in your stomach, but that was an exciting moment and leading the transformation at Micron from being somewhat a laggard in technology to today becoming a key player.

clear leader in DRAM and NAND technologies and really driving vertical integration, has been an exciting journey. And again, common thing here too is an amazing team here at Micron because it had an amazing team, even when I joined and then, you know, really focusing on leveraging its innovation capabilities and driving leadership of technology and products, and focusing on. execution and focusing on building a culture of accountability. It just has been a fun journey all the way from SanDisk to Micron here today.

‍Michael Marks: Well, I'm going to, I'm going to dig into that a little bit, but I am reminded of, of a story from the early SanDisk days. And for the listeners here, you know, that pictures and videos are stored in flash memory.

And I remember very early on that Kodak had an opportunity to acquire SanDisk and didn't. And that was actually the way, the way that the camera pictures would get stored. And now, of course, they're not in business anymore and the flash memory business turned out to be really big. So that's just kind of a cool story.

So, so Sanjay, a little bit, um, before we, obviously we're going to talk about all the hardware stuff and what's happening in the industry and all that, but tell us a little bit about your style as a CEO. You just talked about two different situations, you know, one where you were the founder and everybody just sort of looked up to you and the company developed from small to big.

And in another where you just sort of. Parachute in. So what, what skills does it take to, to, to do both of those things?

Sanjay Mehrotra: I think, you know, certainly as I mentioned, both at SanDisk as well as at Micron, focus on team is extremely important. Having a team, surround yourself with really smart people, good people drive that drive collaboration together, addressing all.

The challenges and opportunities critically important. And really I've been blessed with strong teams and ability to work with strong teams, both at SanDisk as well as here at Micron. I think at Micron we have best in class here, in, in our industry. Um, I would also say a focus on listening. I think is really important.

When you have strong team, you better be prepared to listen to that team as well and learn from that team. And I think drive that culture across the company at all levels of the organization, encouraging people to feel free to speak up and especially raise hands when they see some issues and Problems so that those can be addressed.

Well, and do they Many many people do some people always hesitate and it is the responsibility of the leaders to absolutely Continuing to emphasize how important it is and share examples of when it we benefit from team members speaking up. I would also say if, um, you know, innovation is core, has been core to both SanDisk as well as at Micron is absolutely part of the DNA, but focusing on innovation with execution, I think, and balancing the two so that ultimately you can produce strong results.

And that requires attention to detail and of course, taking some calculated risks and building a culture of accountability as well. These are some of the things that I very much focused on during my years in management and leadership at SanDisk as well as at Micron.

Michael Marks: Well, you know, congratulations on that, obviously two very successful companies.

So let's get into the, into the heart of the matter here. We'd talk about what's going on in the industry. And, you know, we've, I've had the pleasure of talking with Vinod, you know, Kosa, who, you know, and talking about the fact that Venture started in the semiconductor. Industry, right? Everybody came out of Fairchild, National Semiconductor.

And, you know, we kind of, we grew up with all these, you know, hardware folks, you know, Steve Luzo at Seagate, you know, there's lots of them. We all know them. And, um, you know, in the, in the investing industry in, in venture specifically, there's been a real move away from hardware over the last 30 years to, to e commerce and SaaS companies, enterprise software, you know, has been, has been what people have been focused on.

Now, as you know, With Nvidia being, you know, one of the most valuable companies in the world, and Broadcom and others, and Micron working its way up this path, all of a sudden, we're the cool kids again. You know, we've been doing this for a long time, and now everybody wants to talk about what, what it means.

And so, just some general reflections, I'm going to get into some specifics, but some general reflections on that, in terms of, you know, you've been in the hardware business your whole life, and what, what has that felt like to you that, You know, people were not interested so much and all of a sudden they are absolutely exciting for us.

Sanjay Mehrotra: I have been in this industry and semiconductors actually memory for more than four decades now. And it is wonderful to see the recognition, the importance that semiconductors play today, you know, across everything electronic, you know, semiconductors are key and, you know, global economies. are being driven by semiconductors.

National security semiconductors play an important role. Economic growth, they play an important role. So it's really wonderful to see, you know, the focus on semiconductors. No question that pandemic highlighted the importance of semiconductors and across the world. across the geographies around the globe, you see focus on semiconductors.

So no question that, you know, semiconductors are critically important. Of course, it is R& D heavy industry. It is a capex heavy industry. Now the applications are at levels that, you know, in our industry in memory, which is very capital intensive and cyclical as well. But applications are really, truly delivering value that has never been seen before.

Value that the memory is driving in the applications. And that's where I think the value that semiconductors, in our case, memory, that it's unleashing, you know, today, particularly driven by AI. That's what is really making semiconductors truly cool. And semiconductors are not just about components. I mean, they're absolutely about systems as well, applications, and really the whole vertical integration, the whole enchilada.

And that's what just makes today extremely exciting.

Michael Marks: You know, you have a perspective here that that we don't, that I would like to hear you share a little bit about, which is your interactions with the investment community. you know, we're, you know, we deal with private companies only and, and I'm just curious to know the fact that semiconductors have become so important, they've gotten cool again.

Is there, is there more enthusiasm from the investment community in the, in the kinds of things that you do? This isn't a view that we have.

Sanjay Mehrotra: I mean, certainly you see, I mean, The investment community is fully recognizing the value of Right. you know, semiconductors, you see that in the valuation of the semiconductor companies today.

You see that in the growth, the revenue growth opportunities, the profitability metrics, the innovation that semiconductors com companies are bringing. Of course, you know, that's what is resulting in the, valuation of these companies. You earlier highlighted how Nvidia has become one of the most valuable companies around.

the globe. So clearly, I think there is a strong recognition from the investment community on the importance of semiconductors. And I would again emphasize not just by investment community, not just by the customer ecosystem across the globe, across the multiple semiconductor and markets, but a great recognition of the importance of semiconductors by governments around the globe on the economic and, security as well as national security aspects.

Michael Marks: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm just curious. So do you have like more analysts who follow you, for example, that that's kind of, you know, how I'm thinking about the interest level, which wasn't so high. So I'm not talking about stock prices per se, but is there more of a following around? I mean,

Sanjay Mehrotra: certainly Micron is followed by very many analysts.

I don't have the count, but absolutely. Analysts, you know, that are sell side analysts, but of course, very many, buy side, investors as well. Right. And the broad base of global investors. So no question that, I mean, our IR department remains pretty busy in terms of engaging, with. You know, broad set of investors.

Yeah, I'm sure that they do.

Michael Marks: All right. Let's get into, let's get into the, what you do and what the impacts are. And one of the things that, that I say frequently when I'm asked to speak and, and, and the other, you know, podcasts we've done and stuff like that is that AI, which everybody's talking about, and everybody talks about chat, GDP, and all the software kinds of stuff.

But one of the things that I think is obvious to everybody, and one of the reasons that hardware has gotten cool again, is that to drive, to use AI the way it's being used. requires an entire remake of the hardware system in the world, from the devices we carry to the semiconductors that get, that get created to, you know, storage and energy use and, and, data centers, all this stuff is going to get redone.

And, and, and there's a huge interest in it. We know how much. you know, power it takes to just run a search and so on. So you're right smack in the middle of all this stuff with, with memory. So why don't you tell us how, where, where you fit in the ecosystem, what the, what the innovations are required in terms of memory, and then also how you see What you do impacting the devices we carry, for example.

Sanjay Mehrotra: So, Michael, as you mentioned earlier, that there was a time when SanDisk had started that, digital film was being created and Kodak had interest in making our digital film an exclusive for Kodak. And of course, at that time, you know, Eli Harari, kudos to him and the team chose not to make our film, an exclusive to Kodak.

Rest is history. Digital films are became, you know, broadly adopted all across. And that was one of the first products that led to the success of flash memory and success of SanDisk. But when you think about it, it used to be digital films. Then it was MP3 audio players, right? Then came mobile phones, then cloud.

It was really, One large market that got created at a time. What's happening today is that AI is going across all of these end market segments. It's not just one market opportunity, new market opportunity that's getting created. AI is driving content growth from smartphones to PCs to data center to gen AI.

and AI servers, automobiles, industrial systems, and that's what is really, really exciting. This has never happened before that you see a new growth vector going across multiple industries driving growth, and that's what is different today about memory industry than what it has been before. And that of course, then requires a tremendous amount of innovation.

It requires broad set of product portfolio in different packaging, packaging technology has become really, really important, more important than ever packages that can address high bandwidth memory, high performance, and of course packages that have to manage thermal aspects well so that power dissipation, et cetera, which is.

As you pointed out is important. Is that R&D that you do as well?

Sanjay Mehrotra: We absolutely do. World's leading R& D on the packaging side as well. So I'm just trying to highlight how things have changed. markets are diverse. Products have to be, you know, product portfolio has to be much broader than what it was in the past to address the various form factors and various interfaces, various performance and power and capacity considerations that are required going from, you know, an Evie self driven car to, data center and everything in between. So from data center to the edge devices. So innovation in memory with respect to scaling, of course, course, you have to continue to drive that because that's what assures cost position.

And, that's key, but performance is becoming increasingly important form factors, interfaces, and what's a packages and packaging assembly technology testing to make sure that the quality levels at the highest standards, you know, You can imagine the quality level that's expected in an automobile, as well as in data center, when critical mission critical applications are being driven.

So all of this has really seen a huge transformation, huge set of. new requirements.

Sanjay Mehrotra: I presume your R&D spending is going up a lot. Leadership and innovation is required. R& D spending absolutely is key and R& D spending has absolutely gone up when you look at it over the years. Yet, Micron actually has been extremely efficient when you look at it as a percentage of revenue.

Okay, because revenue growth, of course, has been driven as well. Most important thing, Michael, here is that today it is all about data. I mean, data is driving the insights and is driving consumer experience and business productivity. Data lives in the products that Micron makes, and that data has to be accessed fast.

It has to be available with low latency. It has to be available in large quantities to drive these AI applications. These AI applications, Gen AI applications, which had just started with, you know, hundreds of millions of parameters, and now they are into several trillion of parameters for large language models, these are just some examples of, you know, the kind of workloads that memory is used for and the requirements that are placed on memory.

So it's all at the end of the day, the world today is being driven by data. And that's what is driving the value of memory. Because memory is what enables access to data and storage of data.

Michael Marks: So I would just like you to explain to our listeners, a lot of our listeners will not know what high bandwidth memory is, and that's all in the news, and that's an important thing, and you just addressed it.

But for the people who don't know what it is, could you give a bit of a of an outline of that, please?

Sanjay Mehrotra: Yeah, so high bandwidth memory means it is a high capacity memory. where you can access data at very high speeds, much higher, several times higher than standard memory in terms of data. You can look at it as a much bigger pipe of data so that data can flow through it much, much faster.

Another aspect that's very important in high bandwidth memory is power consumption, right? And proud to say that, you know, microns high bandwidth memory today is 30 percent lower power than any other high band bandwidth memory that exists in the industry. So power consumption, just like you noted, the data centers.

Power consumption is critically important. I think the world knows that data centers consume so much power today. So every aspect of whether it is the GPUs trying to lower power memory, trying to lower power is critically important. So high bandwidth memory basically provides a wide pipe of. data flow so that data can flow faster than just standard memories that existed before.

And this requires tremendous amount of complex technology and technology with respect to the memory chip development as well in terms of the chip design, process technology, the chip architecture, but it also requires tremendous amount of packaging complexity because it has hundreds of thousands of interconnects that are flowing through where the data is flowing through in parallel in between various memory chips.

And that's what is absolutely key to enabling Gen AI applications today. So high bandwidth memory is a key enabler. of AI applications, particularly Gen AI

Michael Marks: applications. And so how new is it? So, I mean, is there, is it on the market? Is this, you know, where do we stand in the development of high bandwidth?

Sanjay Mehrotra: 2023 really is the first year of, broad increasing. adoption of high bandwidth memory. And of course, primarily led by NVIDIA 2023. But high bandwidth memory is the fastest growing segment within the memory industry. And as you know, if you just look at revenue, it was in low single digit, billions of the total industry in 2023.

And when we look at 2025, you're looking at this, um, at 20 billion plus often in memory industry, just in high bandwidth memory. Okay. So this is a product which is growing. We like to say, I mean, the metric we like to use is that it's growing at a rate of more than 50 percent Kaggle in terms of bit growth.

Okay. Yes. So Its demand is growing higher and it is not just in terms of bits that the demand is going higher. Its value is substantial because it's a key enabler of AI. So high bandwidth memory is a complex memory product. It is a high cost memory product to build, but it is a high value product to our customers as well.

So highly priced, more profitable part of the memory industry as well.

Michael Marks: Well, that's a great segue to, to the next discussion, which is. The fabs, you know, I, I'm interested to know, you know, a couple of things. What, what does it cost to do a fab today? I don't know, back when I was the chairman of SanDisk, it was 6 billion or something like that.

I'm sure that number has gone up. I just like to explore a little bit into the, into the cost of these things, you know, the chip sack, what kind of people it takes, how, how this high bandwidth memory and AI is changing the industry from a logistic standpoint.

Sanjay Mehrotra: So Michael, very good question that how bandwidth memory is changing the industry.

And this is an important question that we should spend just a couple of minutes here on. Um, so I mentioned that high bandwidth memory is a, you know, highly complex memory. So important factor to understand is that today, HBM 3E, which is, you know, the latest high bandwidth memory that is in the market.

And again, that's a product where Micron absolutely leads in specifications in the industry. And we are ramping up our production with this product, this kind of product. takes three times as many wafers to produce the same number of bits as a standard product. And again, this is related to the increased complexity of the product.

So think about it. It takes three times more wafers to produce the same bits. As a standard product in the same technology node. What this does is it's create, it's changing the dynamics, the supply demand dynamic of the industry. It's creating a supply tightness in the industry today and in the future, there will be HBM four memory and HBM four will be more 2026 when HBM four memory gets deployed.

HVM4 memory will have even a bigger factor than three in terms of its comparison to the number of wafers required with a standard product. So what this is saying is that as you look ahead, you know, the memory demand supply environment factors, key factors will be very different from in the past. HVM is having a major impact as a tailwind in terms of supply tightness.

So this is what, when you look at what does this all mean in the longer term, this means that you can't just meet the demand growth that exists all across the end markets in DRAM only through technology transitions, you need green field capacity, additional green field capacity. So you need new fabs.

Michael Marks: And are these fabs very different or just more expensive or what?

Sanjay Mehrotra: No. So the fab HBM product is made using leveraging the same kind of technology, such as our industry leading one beta technology, which is also used in other compute and mobile products. Okay. And I want to point out that the demand growth is not just about HBM or in data center. HBM goes in data center application.

Demand growth is also in smartphones, right? AI enabled smartphones need more DRAM content. And, you know, does

Michael Marks: that look different? I mean, so that

Sanjay Mehrotra: memory is different that goes into the smartphones. It's not HBM memory. It's a low power DRAM and high capacity DRAM that goes into smartphones. PC DRAM is different.

AI enabled PCs are growing in their penetration over the course of next few years, just like smart AI enabled smartphones will grow. Common thing again is that again, these are great examples of edge devices, not just data center driving memory growth, but edge devices like smartphone and PC is driving.

more memory, more content demand. you know, this year, Galaxy S24 got introduced Android phone, that is able to give you live language translation in conversations, et cetera, right? That requires AI capabilities. In China, Honor introduced phones, their Magic 6 Pro phone that has like 7 to 10 billion parameters of AI, Gen AI engine built in.

And that gives you intent based capabilities, you know, such as your gestures or your Text or your speech, and it can recognize the intent and then take actions and provide fantastic things that we would not have imagined. All of this requires more memory content. Okay. So across the data center to the edge demand for memory we project over the next several years is continue to grow at a cagor of mid teens And this requires new fabs to be built and yes, these fabs are, you know expensive, you know So each of these fabs is well above in you know in teens billions of dollars Of course those investments are made over extended period of time.

And we of course will ramp up production in those fabs in line with the market demand. So, Micron has talked about, um, you know, we are building a fab in Boise, Idaho. And that fab right now is actually under construction. Of course, Micron is headquartered out of Boise. We have had large R& D fab, world class R& D fab for memory in Boise.

Building a manufacturing fab in Boise will provide us the benefit of co location of R& D. And manufacturing and which provides the clear benefit of accelerated time to market of new technologies into high volume production. You can imagine when R and D engineers and manufacturing engineers work side by side, it helps accelerate the yield ramp, the quality ramp, the production ramp, and gives time to market advantage of leading edge technologies.

So this fab in Boise, Idaho, that we are building, you know, we have said, you know, over the course of 10 years, you know, it will have an investment that will be in the range of 15 to 20 billion. And of course, this, the shell is under construction now, it will be equipped with most advanced equipment, semi conductor equipment later.

That equipment facilitation will be done based on the assessment of industry demand so that we can keep supply and demand in balance. We are also going to be building, four fab cluster in Syracuse, New York. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. Over 20 years time frame and that investment will be, um, around a hundred billion dollars over 20 years in those four fabs.

And again, will be in line, supply growth to be brought in line with, with the demand growth. And that fab is expected to come online. more first fab, more like in 2028 timeframe, next year we expect to break ground and begin construction related activities.

Michael Marks: So, how important is the CHIPS Act and the government involvement, and I'm sure the listeners would, would really like to know about that.

I mean, we hear about it, but, but what is it like on the ground working with the government and how important is it and so on?

Sanjay Mehrotra: So, Michael, very clearly, as I'm highlighted, given the demand growth that we expect in the industry, we needed greenfield fabs to be built.

Michael Marks: Sure.

Sanjay Mehrotra: Today, Micron's, vast majority of manufacturing is in Asia.

Sure. And, so we would have built the greenfield fabs. new fabs to meet the future expected demand somewhere in the world, you know, where we already have operations today, you know, especially in these Various Asian countries that micron has fabs in. Chipset was critical to enable us to bring that manufacturing base for leading edge memory technology here to the U S without chipset support.

We would not have been able to bring leading edge many memory manufacturing here to the U S. And that is because there is a 35. to 45 percent cost difference between U. S. manufacturing versus the well established manufacturing base in Asian countries, which have supported semiconductor manufacturing for well over two decades.

So CHIPS Act support was needed, and CHIPS Act support is in two forms. One, it is CHIPS grants that help you up front with construction and you know, ongoing readiness for high volume production of leading edge technology. So it, it helps you, Chips Act helps you with grants. That's one piece of it. And second piece of it is investment tax credits.

The combination of the two helps bridge the cost gap that exists with Asia. So I want to be very clear to your listeners that Chips Act absolutely was Essential, right in order for semiconductor manufacturing to come back onshore here. And I want to highlight to you that today only 2% of the world's total semiconductor memory production is here in the us.

2%. Only 2%. Okay. And remember, you know, way back a few decades ago, vast majority of that production used to be. here in the U S and over the last couple of decades, it all moved overseas in Asian fabs, right? With Micron's efforts and thanks to the chips act, we will be able to change that 2 percent to about 10 percent by early 2030s.

Michael Marks: Oh, that's it. That's a lot.

Sanjay Mehrotra: So that's really moving the needle and bringing leading edge memory manufacturing to the U S. Our customers, of course, want that, you know, they want a diversified supply chain. They do want, memory here in the U. S., um, you know, along with, of our continuing investments in Asia to continue to advance technologies there.

So it's not like, We are giving up on our manufacturing. That will absolutely continue with technology transitions there, but the green field capacity will be here. And of course, it's important from, to the governments from national security solutions and economic considerations to have resilient, supply chains.

Michael Marks: So one of the things people, you know, ask me about, so you, you highlighted the, an important problem, which is the costs are higher here than in other countries. and you just mentioned that the CHIPS Act helps to bridge those differences. Do you still expect it to be more expensive in any meaningful way or what impact does that have?

Sanjay Mehrotra: Very good question. And as you well know, that until you get to scale, you don't may get cost competitiveness, right? So there is no question that even with Chips act support in the early phases of the production ramp, the memory production cost here would still be higher than the volume production that's in, occurring in Asia in that timeframe, because that will be on large existing fabs already.

Michael Marks: Right. So if I hear this correctly, you're saying that once those are at scale, the equivalent scale is to the Asian countries and with the support of the chips act, it'll be globally competitive.

Sanjay Mehrotra: Once they get to the large scale, competitive scale, then yes, with the support of the CHIPS Act, grants, and ongoing investment tax credits.

Oh, sure. Right. You'll need the ongoing investment tax credits. And investment tax credits, just for the benefit of your listeners, are at 25 percent of the investment that will be made. by the companies in all of the equipment to support this leading edge semiconductor production. So keep in mind, I mean, bulk of investment is going to be made by the semiconductor companies like Micron, of course, a lot of R and D investment.

And you had asked that, what does it take to do all of this? We talked a lot about the manufacturing side, the fab side, but there is no question that you need leading edge R and D. And, you know, one of the objectives of CHIPS Act also is to, support greater research, and that requires collaboration between universities, governments, and the private entities that call for semiconductor companies to continue to make sure that we are driving advanced research, research in all areas.

Uh, I mean, process technology, product development, futuristic, emerging technologies. Packaging technologies, all of this, and last piece, of course, that's needed is the workforce.

Michael Marks: You know, I was just about to go there. That was going to be my last question or my last area to explore. Let's talk about that.

And before you, you, you do that, you know, TSMC said it's hard to get, you know, the people, I'm sure you have some of the same stuff. One of the things that I wind up in conversations because of my own background, a lot is about manufacturing jobs. And you know, let's bring more manufacturing jobs to the United States, but as we speak, there's 600, 000 manufacturing jobs in the United States that are not filled.

And that's expected to get to go much higher over the next few years. So how are you going to deal with that?

Sanjay Mehrotra: Absolutely right. That tremendous focus is needed on workforce development as well. And if you look at today, you know, in support of the Chips Act, Biden administration has a lot of focus on working with the semiconductor companies, the community college, as well as university ecosystems to develop the workforce.

Micron is heavily invested, and partnering with other companies as well, because we can't do it all alone. We have to be able to scale this up. So a lot of initiatives, you know, K through 12 driving. STEM education programs, engagement with community colleges for apprenticeship programs. Micron has started bringing students from community colleges for training in semiconductor, fab, apprenticeship, you know, technician and operator workforce development.

And of course, we have established northeast and northwest university ecosystems as well, bringing semiconductor curriculum and engaging more students in semiconductor workforce. Um, we also have to, I mean, a lot of this will take few years, several years to, you know, develop the pipeline. So we have to reach out also to the existing workforce.

We are tapping into rural communities, tapping into the veterans institutions to bring more veterans into semiconductor workforce, because veterans make actually. Great workforce for us because they have, you know, of course, strong, um, characters, strong discipline and strong technical. You know, aptitude as well.

That is needed. For example, we are engaged with, um, the veteran Institute in Syracuse university, to really bring in veterans, um, in us, I mean, a large percentage of our hires today are happening, bringing veterans into the workforce. So, and by the way, it's not just running the fabs. Construction of the fabs requires tremendous amount of workforce as well.

So a lot of effort that is needed, Michael here, and we are doing our part. We are partnering with the government here as well. Government is supporting several initiatives. Um, we are putting in money into 75 million that's going into Idaho community framework, development, you know, to support ultimately the workforce and the community that is needed for the future in Syracuse, New York, we have, partnership with the New York state government for total 500 million green chips community development framework where Micron will be putting 250 million over 20 years to support again various activities related to workforce and community development.

All of this is going to be needed over time frame of several years to continue to make sure that we Build the workforce of the future and build the communities that are needed for semiconductor manufacturing here in the U. S.

Michael Marks: Well, thank you, Sanjay. This has been completely fascinating. Going back to what I said at the beginning, starting with, SanDisk and, you know, tiny little semiconductor companies, talking about hundreds of billions of dollars has been quite a transformation.

You have an amazing job because we just talked through all the, you know, you have all the geopolitics and labor and technology, innovation, government. It must be a fascinating job. So I really thank you for sharing that with us. Thanks. I cannot wrap this up without paying homage to A man that we both knew, Steve Appleton, who is, you know, the CEO, longtime CEO at Micron, who unfortunately didn't live to see this.

He, he did predict it. I must say in conversations we had 20 years ago, he thought that this was going to become one of the most important industries in the world. And it certainly has. So I just wanted to mention that. Thank you so much for taking the time. This has really been fascinating.

Sanjay Mehrotra: Absolutely.

Steve Appleton was just an amazing leader of the memory industry. I always say we stand. He had another industry on the shoulders of giants, and he was definitely one of them. Eli Harari, another one, you know, from SanDisk. And you're absolutely right. This is a very, very fascinating time. Um, and I truly believe best is yet to come.

Michael Marks: Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Mike.

Thanks for tuning in to the Tech Surge podcast from Celesta Capital. If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to share it, subscribe, or leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. We'll be back every two weeks with more insights and discussions of all things deep tech.

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