U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who worked on the CHIPS Act as a senior Democrat on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, said several other Minnesota companies have applied for funding. As President Joe Biden’s tenure at the White House winds down, she said, she is unsure which firms — if any — could be next in line for direct aid.

“This is a major win for Minnesota, once again,” Klobuchar said. “But we also know that we can expand. And that we shouldn’t just be thinking tech in California and tech in New York. We should also be thinking Minnesota.”

When Biden announced the bill, she added, he held a chip from SkyWater.

Sonderman said the funding will complement more than $320 million in ongoing facility and equipment upgrades planned through 2026. The company expanded its facility in 2020 with the help of a $170 million grant from the Department of Defense to boost production of chips for the military.

Control Data, one of the nation’s leading makers of midrange and mainframe computers and Minnesota’s dominant technology firm for decades, built SkyWater’s plant in the 1980s. It later sold the facility to Cypress Semiconductor, which sold it to the private investors; they formed SkyWater in 2017.