Open Source: In Chatham County, a tale of two construction projects

I’m Brian Gordon , tech reporter for The News & Observer , and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter on business, labor and technology in North Carolina.

One county, two massive projects, two very different scenes.

On the western edge of North Carolina’s Chatham County, near Siler City, the incoming Wolfspeed semiconductor plant looks like the multibillion-dollar undertaking that it is. Men and machines move among mounds of dirt and work trailers. It’s a complex, a network of logistics. A giant factory has been erected, with remarkable speed , which the Durham chipmaker is now filling with equipment. Wolfspeed says more than 1,800 employees will follow.

VinFast’s site in eastern Chatham County has no significant vertical structures. It is about as flat as it was when the Vietnamese electric vehicle company held a groundbreaking ceremony there in late July. Where Wolfspeed executives repeatedly mention their Siler City plant during earnings calls, VinFast leaders on an investor call Wednesday referenced their North Carolina site only once — when an investor asked about it.

This week, I drove by the VinFast site (roughly a 30-minute drive from Durham) and saw some construction workers, some machines, but nothing close to what one can observe at the Wolfspeed site, even though both projects were announced in 2022 ( VinFast in March , Wolfspeed in September ).

Chatham County officials this week provided an explanation for VinFast’s relative inactivity: In December, the company informed the county it wished to revise the design of its main assembly area. Chatham officials reviewed the revised, smaller designs and provided comments. They’ve been waiting for VinFast to respond for four months.

When asked about its North Carolina site timeline this week, VinFast reaffirmed its plan to open the factory by the end of next year. “Hiring a lot of workers and putting in operations by the end of next year,” chairwoman Le Thi Thu Thuy told investors. “But probably the full operations, that will take a couple of months.”

Meeting this timeline would require uncommon construction speed. Wolfspeed is an example of how quickly a manufacturer can work; Chatham officials, developers, and even U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis all marveled at how the chipmaker completed its building exterior in nine months.

But each said Wolfspeed’s pace was unprecedented. VinFast would have to do it again. The company already postponed its plant opening once from 2024. And it has deadlines approaching under its incentive package with the state.

This week’s headlines

• Wegmans is coming to Charlotte .
• More Charlotte-area news: Piedmont Lithium received a key state mining permit to build a new $1.2 billion lithium mine in Gaston County.
• Epic Games tells a federal judge what it would like Google to change about its app store following December’s antitrust verdict.
• More VinFast news: Shareholders filed a federal securities class-action lawsuit against the North Carolina-bound carmaker. Here’s more on the claim and how these types of cases generally work.
• Greenville’s MrBeast employs several lobbyists in North Carolina, journalist Paul Blest noted on X.
• Boom Supersonic , which looks to build passenger jets in Greensboro, received FAA approval to test fly at supersonic speeds.

And after Fujifilm Diosynth announced a major expansion of its Holly Springs facility last week, the company told the N&O it is laying off 67 workers at its Research Triangle Park site as it reduces its small-scale business units in several locations. Fujifilm blamed a slowdown in venture capital funding for “early-stage research projects, particularly in the cell and gene therapies market.”

National Tech Happenings

• Tesla lays off more than 10% of its workforce.
• Google fires 28 workers who protested the company’s cloud services deal with Israel.
• The U.S. House incorporates TikTok ban bill into broader legislation on Israel and Ukraine aid.

Thanks for reading!