Under Secretary of Defense Heidi Shyu joins Rep. McCollum on tour of various facilities in Twin Cities with an impact on the defense industry, national security and the Minnesota economy
BLOOMINGTON, Minn. – October 10, 2022 – SkyWater Technology (NASDAQ: SKYT), the trusted technology realization partner, today announced it hosted Congresswoman Betty McCollum (MN-04) on October 7th for a tour of its Minnesota facility and a discussion on the U.S. semiconductor industrial base and the investments Congress has made in microelectronics with the CHIPS Act. As Chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense (HAC-D), McCollum welcomed Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering/DOD Chief Technology Officer Heidi Shyu and the DOD’s Principal Director for Microelectronics Dr. Devanand Shenoy to join her on the tour of Twin Cities companies, including SkyWater.
During the visit to SkyWater, the discussion focused on the company’s value chain for both Department of Defense and commercial technologies and how it is leveraging public-private partnerships at its semiconductor manufacturing sites. The delegation toured the DOD-funded expansion of SkyWater’s Trusted facility which added clean room area and supporting infrastructure to enable radiation-hardened and complementary technologies. Recently, the DOD determined that SkyWater has successfully completed the base prototype project and awarded the company an additional $99M for productization and qualification of its 90 nm rad-hard process.
In addition, SkyWater presented its Technology as a ServiceSM (TaaS) business model, which enables funded technology development projects in the same facility that it runs manufacturing, allowing for a seamless transfer of developed technology into production and is a unique model in the industry.
“We very much appreciate the interest in SkyWater by Representative McCollum and Under Secretary Shyu and the time they spent with us to learn more about our mission and value drivers for the DOD,” said Thomas Sonderman, SkyWater president and CEO. “We will continue to be a strong partner for the DOD, contributing to the national security of our country. SkyWater has been making significant progress with our RH90 technology roadmap to broaden onshore production capabilities for strategic rad-hard electronics.”
Sonderman continued, “We look forward to supporting efforts that stem from the CHIPS Act by leveraging our commercial, government and academic partners to bolster U.S. manufacturing, develop the nation’s workforce and improve our country’s competitiveness.”
Earlier in the day, McCollum and Shyu participated in a roundtable event at St. Thomas University in St. Paul where more than 85 business, tech, and startup executives discussed the role national security plays in Minnesota’s economy; how the Twin Cities is uniquely suited to leverage its collective commercial and academic talent to contribute to national security priorities.
In her opening remarks at the roundtable event, McCollum stated, “The DOD needs to leverage the entirety of our commercial sector, from startups and small businesses all the way up to the primes, if we are going to stay competitive with our adversaries. But that means engaging with areas of the country that may not be traditional defense industrial states.”
McCollum added, “Congress is going to continue to invest in research and development – the innovations that will strengthen our whole community, including our commercial and our academic sectors. This is a critical time in history, and we are living through events that will fundamentally reshape the world we live in for the rest of our lives. We need everyone – all of our workforce talent – in industry, in academia, and in the public sector, to step up together and meet the challenges we face.”
About SkyWater Technology
SkyWater (NASDAQ: SKYT) is a U.S.-owned semiconductor manufacturer and a DMEA-accredited Trusted supplier. SkyWater’s Technology as a ServiceSM model streamlines the path to production for customers with development services, volume production and heterogeneous integration solutions in its world-class U.S. facilities. This pioneering model enables innovators to co-create the next wave of technology with diverse categories including mixed-signal CMOS, ROICs, rad-hard ICs, power management, MEMS, superconducting ICs, photonics, carbon nanotubes and interposers. SkyWater serves growing markets including aerospace & defense, automotive, biomedical, cloud & computing, consumer, industrial and IoT. For more information, visit: www.skywatertechnology.com.
SkyWater Technology Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains “forward-looking” statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements that are based on the Company’s current expectations or forecasts of future events, rather than past events and outcomes, and such statements are not guarantees of future performance. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions, which may cause the Company’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Key factors that could cause the Company’s actual results to be different than expected or anticipated include, but are not limited to, factors discussed in the “Risk Factors” section of its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and in other documents that the Company files with the SEC, which are available at http://www.sec.gov. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release.
SkyWater Company Contact: Tara Luther | 952.851.5023 | tara.luther@skywatertechnology.com
SkyWater Media Contact: Lauri Julian | 949.280.5602 | lauri.julian@skywatertechnology.com