On June 17, Nokia announced a major expansion of its advanced chip testing and packaging plant in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, to boost photonic semiconductor capacity for U.S. AI data centers.

The project includes $30 million in Nokia investment** , plus **$4 million in state funds and $10 million** in federal tax credits. It will create **250 new jobs** and generate an estimated **$500 million in local economic output over five years. Photonics capacity could scale up to 10x the current level. The expansion adds 10,000 sq ft of office space plus equal space for labs, assembly, and warehousing, bringing total staff to 500.

CEO Justin Hotard said the move is part of Nokia's $4 billion U.S. AI comms investment , supported by the 2022 CHIPS Act. Governor Josh Shapiro noted that less than 2% of global advanced packaging is in the U.S. (over 80% in Asia), highlighting the strategic need.

Nokia’s photonic interconnect technology enables seamless connectivity across compute/storage nodes, allowing small edge sites to handle AI tasks without massive new centralized data centers.

ICgoodFind: Nokia’s U.S. photonics expansion leverages CHIPS Act support to scale AI interconnect capacity – a critical layer beyond GPUs and models.