KLA's $138 Million Investment Brings New Jobs, Innovation, and Global Opportunity to Newport
Newport is celebrating a major boost to its economy and its future as a technology hub, following the recent announcement that KLA Corporation, a global leader in semiconductor process control and enabling technology, has opened a cutting-edge $138 million research and development (R&D) and manufacturing centre in the city.
The investment is not just a win for KLA, it's a game-changer for Newport. With space for 750 highly skilled employees, the new 237,000-square-foot facility will create a wave of new job opportunities, helping to strengthen the local workforce, attract top technical talent, and grow Newport's reputation on the international stage as a centre of engineering and manufacturing excellence.
KLA's local roots run deep. Its Wales-based product division, SPTS, has been a leader in semiconductor equipment innovation since 1984, winning multiple Queen's Awards for excellence in R&D and export. Now, with this expansion, the company is doubling down on Newport's role in the global semiconductor ecosystem, ensuring that cutting-edge technologies developed here will support industries like advanced packaging, power devices, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), radio frequency (RF), and photonics.
The Newport site features 25,000 square feet of R&D cleanrooms, 35,000 square feet of state-of-the-art manufacturing space, and dedicated customer collaboration and demonstration areas. This will not only enable KLA to meet rising global demand, especially as AI accelerates the need for advanced chips, but it will also serve as a key anchor for Newport's growing electronics and semiconductor community.
'This investment is about more than expanding KLA's capacity, it's about investing in Newport's future,' said Dan Collins, site leader and general manager at KLA. 'We're creating high-quality jobs, advancing technology, and deepening our long-term partnerships with the local community. It's a powerful moment for Newport, and we're excited to play a leading role in shaping what comes next.'
Welsh and U.K. government leaders also highlighted the significance of KLA's decision to grow in Newport.
'We have a globally renowned compound semiconductor cluster here in Wales,' said Jo Stevens, Secretary of State for Wales. 'KLA's investment strengthens our position as a leader in this vital and growing industry — driving innovation, economic growth, and opportunity for people here in Newport and beyond.'
As KLA opens its doors to a new era of innovation, Newport stands ready to reap the benefits, more jobs, enhanced skills development, and a place on the global map as a city helping to power the technologies of tomorrow.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
11 minutes ago
- The Independent
This AI wristband will listen to everything you say
Amazon is in the process of acquiring Bee, a San Francisco-based startup that developed a wearable AI assistant bracelet. The Bee device, launched last year, provides users with personalised summaries of their day, reminders, and suggestions by analysing conversations. Maria de Lourdes Zollo, Bee's CEO, confirmed the acquisition, expressing that it would help bring their 'truly personal, agentic AI to even more customers'. Early reviews of the product have highlighted concerns about its ability to differentiate real-life conversations from online content, alongside potential data privacy issues due to its inbuilt microphones. While Bee states it processes audio in real-time and immediately deletes it without storing or selling data, it is uncertain whether Amazon will maintain these privacy policies given its past actions.
BBC News
11 minutes ago
- BBC News
Trump unveils AI Action Plan that aims to clamp down regulations and 'bias'
The Trump administration has unveiled an ambitious roadmap to develop artificial intelligence, pledging to boost US innovation while stripping away what it calls "bureaucratic red tape" and "ideological bias".The 28-page AI Action Plan includes more than 90 policy actions for the rapidly developing technology that administration officials say can be implemented over the next year."We believe we're in an AI race, and we want the United States to win that race," Trump administration crypto czar David Sacks told AI plan promises to build data centre infrastructure, and promote American technology - but was panned by critics who consider it an ideological flex by the White House. The plan, unveiled on Wednesday, calls for federal agencies to review and repeal policies that stand in the way of AI development, and encourage AI development in both government and the private Donald Trump is expected to sign three related executive orders on Wednesday, including one that would accelerate the export of US AI technologies abroad, and one focused on removing "woke" AI and "ideological bias"."American development of AI systems must be free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas," the White House said. "With the right government policies, the United States can solidify its position as the leader in AI and secure a brighter future for all Americans."Crypto czar Sacks added that the plan is partially focused on preventing AI technology from being "misused or stolen by malicious actors" and will "monitor for emerging and unforeseen risks from AI".The Trump administration has positioned the expansion of AI infrastructure and investments in the United States as a way to stay ahead of China."AI is a revolutionary technology that's going to have profound ramifications for both the economy and national security," Sacks said. "It's just very important that America continues to be the dominant power in AI."But critics argued that the plan was a giveaway to Big Tech."The White House AI Action plan was written by and for tech billionaires, and will not serve the interests of the broader public," said Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute."[T]he administration's stance prioritizes corporate interests over the needs of everyday people who are all already being affected by AI," West 2023, Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden, signed an executive order that called for safety and security standards governing the use of AI in the federal government - an order that was rescinded by Trump on the first day he took office in later, Trump signed an executive order that called for an accelerated AI development, the removal of ideological bias and today's AI action plan, for which it sought public than 10,000 public comments were received in response, according to regulation was also a major sticking point in recent negotiations about Trump's massive budget bill passed by Congress earlier this bill originally included a ten-year moratorium barring states from regulating artificial ultimately stripped that language from the bill. Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the world's top tech stories and trends. Outside the UK? Sign up here.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Google develops AI tool that fills missing words in Roman inscriptions
In addition to sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a freshwater system and public health, the Romans also produced a lot of inscriptions. Making sense of the ancient texts can be a slog for scholars, but a new artificial intelligence tool from Google DeepMind aims to ease the process. Named Aeneas after the mythical Trojan hero, the program predicts where and when inscriptions were made and makes suggestions where words are missing. Historians who put the program through its paces said it transformed their work by helping them identify similar inscriptions to those they were studying, a crucial step for setting the texts in context, and proposing words to fill the inevitable gaps in worn and damaged artefacts. 'Aeneas helps historians interpret, attribute and restore fragmentary Latin texts,' said Dr Thea Sommerschield, a historian at the University of Nottingham who developed Aeneas with the tech firm. 'That's the grand challenge that we set out to tackle.' Inscriptions are among the most important records of life in the ancient world. The most elaborate can cover monument walls, but many more take the form of decrees from emperors, political graffiti, love poems, business records, epitaphs on tombs and writings on everyday life. Scholars estimate that about 1,500 new inscriptions are found every year. 'What makes them unique is that they are written by the ancient people themselves across all social classes,' said Sommerschield. 'It's not just history written by the victors.' But there is a problem. The texts are often broken into pieces or so ravaged by time that parts are illegible. And many inscribed objects have been scattered over the years, making their origins uncertain. The Google team led by Yannis Assael worked with historians to create an AI tool that would aid the research process. The program is trained on an enormous database of nearly 200,000 known inscriptions, amounting to 16m characters. Aeneas takes text, and in some cases images, from the inscription being studied and draws on its training to build a list of related inscriptions from 7BC to 8AD. Rather than merely searching for similar words, the AI identifies and links inscriptions through deeper historical connections. Having trained on the rich collection of inscriptions, the AI can assign study texts to one of 62 Roman provinces and estimate when it was written to within 13 years. It also provides potential words to fill in any gaps, though this has only been tested on known inscriptions where text is blocked out. In a test run, researchers set Aeneas loose on a vast inscription carved into monuments around the Roman empire. The self-congratulatory Res Gestae Divi Augusti describes the life achievements of the first Roman emperor, Augustus. Aeneas came up with two potential dates for the work, either the first decade BC or between 10 and 20AD. The hedging echoes the debate among scholars who argue over the same dates. In another test, Aeneas analysed inscriptions on a votive altar from Mogontiacum, now Mainz in Germany, and revealed through subtle linguistic similarities how it had been influenced by an older votive altar in the region. 'Those were jaw-dropping moments for us,' said Sommerschield. Details are published in Nature and Aeneas is available to researchers online. In a collaboration, 23 historians used Aeneas to analyse Latin inscriptions. The context provided by the tool was helpful in 90% of cases. 'It promises to be transformative,' said Mary Beard, a professor of classics at the University of Cambridge. Jonathan Prag, a co-author and professor of ancient history at the University of Oxford, said Aeneas could be run on the existing corpus of inscriptions to see if the interpretations could be improved. He added that Aeneas would enable a wider range of people to work on the texts. 'The only way you can do it without a tool like this is by building up an enormous personal knowledge or having access to an enormous library,' he said. 'But you do need to be able to use it critically.'
