Cuomo to Reveal Major Nano Utica Deal Thursday

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is expected to travel to Oneida County on Thursday to make a major announcement about SUNY Polytechnic Institute and his $1.5 billion Nano Utica initiative.

The event is expected to be related to SUNY Poly's Quad-C cleanroom lab at its Utica campus, where General Electric Co. has a major role in the state's $500 million Power Electronics Manufacturing Consortium, which is making power control chips out of silicon carbide.

Business and civic leaders have received invitations to attend the event, according to sources who briefed the Times Union.

Just last month, Steve DiMeo, president of Mohawk Valley EDGE, a Rome-based economic development group, said that GE was in the final stages of negotiations with a partner to occupy Quad-C and create 300 jobs, according to the Utica Observer-Dispatch. The deal is related to Cuomo's 2015 Nano Utica announcement.

The name of the partner was not disclosed.

The company will take power electronics chips made of silicon carbide manufactured at SUNY Poly's Albany campus and "package" them in Utica at SUNY Poly's Quad-C facility. Chip packaging involves attaching the wiring to chips that connects them to devices and also enclosing them in protective material.

"General Electric was finalizing a deal with a partner company that will repackage silicon carbide-based wafers made in Albany in the Quad-C building," the Observer-Dispatch wrote about comments that DiMeo made at a Feb. 15 event at the SUNY Poly campus with local business leaders.

Last month, GE licensed its chip packaging technology to Samsung Electro-Mechanics, also known as SEMCO, although there is no indication that Samsung is the partner that will take space at Quad-C.

A spokesman for Cuomo could not immediately be reached for comment on the event.

Just last month, SUNY Poly and GE announced they had processed the first silicon carbide wafers of their power electronics partnership.

The announcement is not expected to be related to efforts by the state to replace ams AG, the Austrian computer chip manufacturer that backed out of a $600 million deal to build a chip factory at the Marcy NanoCenter, which is located next to the SUNY Poly campus.

However, sources say that negotiations with potential tenants - high volume semiconductor manufacturers - have heated up recently, creating hope that the site will be filled soon.

Cuomo has been pushing his Nano Utica initiative for years. GE has plans to do power electronics chip packaging research and development at the Quad-C lab at the SUNY Poly campus.