Three U.S. markets — Phoenix, Austin and upstate New York — were identified as potential landing spots for its latest production facility in January, when plans were first reported. Korea, where Samsung Electronics Co. is headquartered, is also being considered.

At stake: one of the largest foreign investments in U.S. history, with the potential of at least 1,800 jobs being created, according to documents filed by Samsung in January in the Austin area. Samsung is expected to make its decision by this summer — and the company could even buy land in Arizona at an auction scheduled for late April — with construction possibly starting later this year and the plant becoming operational by mid-2023.

Samsung reportedly wants to build smaller, three-nanometer chips at its next plant — a new product line for the company — which could be used in electronics, aviation and defense applications. Bloomberg reported in January that this investment could win the company more American clients and better compete with industry leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., otherwise known as TSMC, which has already announced plans to build its own huge factory in the Phoenix area.

And while a new Samsung plant would not do anything to address the current global chip shortage, it aligns with a push by President Joe Biden’s administration to boost domestic semiconductor production.

Massive investment

Samsung employs 20,000 people in the United States, spread among 46 states. It already has a massive factory in Austin, where two fabrication facilities, or fabs, produce semiconductors and employ roughly 3,000 people (plus thousands of contractors). The company does not have any existing facilities in upstate New York but it does have two Samsung Electronics America operations in the New York City area. Samsung does not have any existing facilities in Arizona.

Here’s how the investment would break down: roughly $11.4 billion would go toward equipment and machinery, while construction of the 7-million-square-foot facility would cost about $5.6 billion, according to an incentives application in Texas.

Each of the three states have their own ways of courting major economic development deals, and each has their own pros and cons that could drive Samsung to their market. Samsung identified the following criteria as important: access to talent, existing semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem, speed to market and strong public-private partnerships.

“The single-most important thing inside site selection is understanding the workforce,” said Tom Stringer, New York-based managing director and site selection and incentives service leader for BDO USA LLP. “Everything else — buildings, real estate, taxes, incentives — everything else is a cost to obtain that talent. It’s a balancing act of cost and availability and how you get that workforce. That automatically doesn’t mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that the most incentives wins. In fact, that is very rare.”

Samsung executives continue to be tight-lipped about the process.

“While we do not have specific plans to build a new fab at this time, we are constantly exploring various opportunities for business development so that we are ready when such opportunities arise. No decision has been made at this time,” said Michele Glaze, director of communications at Samsung Austin Semiconductor.

Ahead of this multibillion-dollar decision, as well as the awarding of any large incentives packages, the Business Journals in Phoenix, Austin and Buffalo researched the advantages and disadvantages of the sites considered frontrunners for Samsung, and asked experts to weigh in on the search.