Applied Materials, Inc. is a Santa Clara, California, supplier of chipmaking equipment whose Arizona presence today includes the Materials-to-Fab Center, which ASU describes as a shared $270 million research, development and prototyping facility, in Tempe; it opened in October 2025 and was operating as of May 2026. It has also announced a planned $200 million facility in Chandler to produce semiconductor equipment components and parts; the latest source on that plan is the City of Chandler's December 2025 year in review, and no construction start or opening date was found. The company is publicly traded, with common stock listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol AMAT. It was incorporated in 1967 and is a Delaware corporation. The company provides equipment, services and software to the semiconductor and related industries, and says it designs, develops, produces and services the wafer fabrication tools its customers need to manufacture semiconductors. In plain terms, it builds and maintains the machines inside chip factories; it does not make chips itself [not independently verified]. Worldwide, it reported net revenue of $28.37 billion for fiscal 2025 and employed approximately 36,500 regular full-time employees across 25 countries as of October 26, 2025, about 42 percent of them in North America. Public filings do not identify an Arizona-specific share of either figure, and the annual report does not name any Arizona site.
Applied Materials works at the equipment stage of the chip supply chain: chipmakers use its wafer fabrication tools to build chips. Its fiscal 2025 annual report calls artificial intelligence and AI-related technologies a significant demand driver for the industries it serves, and adds that AI-related demand is difficult to forecast [not independently verified]. Company-wide, it also sells advanced packaging systems that let customers connect multiple chips together through heterogeneous integration, though the filing does not say these systems are made in Arizona. In Arizona, the verified sources describe two roles. The Tempe Materials-to-Fab Center, operating since October 2025, brings Applied Materials semiconductor manufacturing equipment into a shared setting where the university, industry partners, startups, government entities and other academic institutions can move ideas toward fab prototypes. The planned Chandler facility, as announced, would produce semiconductor equipment components and parts; no update on it after December 2025 was found. Neither is a production chip fab [not independently verified].
Arizona State University announced in October 2020 that Applied Materials was leasing substantial lab space at ASU's MacroTechnology Works to support research and development work; ASU says discussions began in 2018 [not independently verified]. On July 11, 2023, ASU and Applied Materials announced an alliance, aided by the Arizona Commerce Authority, to create a shared research, development and prototyping facility at the ASU Research Park in Tempe, which officially opened on October 9, 2025. Applied Materials' contributions were anticipated to exceed $200 million, including capital investments, equipment operation and maintenance, and research and scholarship funding, with $30 million announced from the Arizona Commerce Authority and $17 million from ASU; no source opened reports the amounts actually spent or paid [not independently verified]. On June 17, 2025, according to Maricopa County documents reported by the Phoenix Business Journal, Applied Materials bought the GO|AZ Ave building in Chandler from GO Industrial for $41.15 million; the building covers 181,655 square feet on a 10-acre site. On August 6, 2025, the company announced plans to invest $200 million in a new advanced manufacturing facility in Chandler, which the City of Chandler says could support potentially 200 additional manufacturing, R&D and services jobs over a five-year period. The City of Chandler repeated the plan in its December 2025 year in review, and no construction start, opening date or address was found in any later source. The sources do not say whether the Chandler building is the site of that facility. ASU describes the Materials-to-Fab Center as a shared $270 million facility inside MacroTechnology Works.
The Materials-to-Fab Center moved from its 2023 announcement to an official opening in October 2025 and, as reported by the Phoenix Business Journal, consists of 50,000 square feet of cleanroom space and 20,000 square feet of wet and dry labs. ASU said in 2023 that the center would be home to Applied Materials' Center of Excellence in materials deposition technology; the October 2025 opening coverage reviewed does not repeat that designation [not independently verified]. By May 2026, ASU said the center already supports ASU research projects tied to the CHIPS and Science Act, including the Southwest Advanced Prototyping Hub and the SHIELD USA advanced packaging initiative; those are ASU projects, not awards to Applied Materials. ASU was also named in May 2026 as an inaugural university research partner at Applied Materials' new EPIC Center, which is in Silicon Valley, California, rather than Arizona [not independently verified]. ASU's 2023 announcement said Applied Materials intends to launch an endowment for scholarships to first-generation and underrepresented minority students in ASU's Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering and to make its Momentum Fund available to ASU students; no later source confirms the endowment's size or funding.
Company job postings dated in 2026 point to further Arizona activity: a Tempe posting describes an Arizona Research Center as an expanding R&D hub focused on materials innovation, another lists a Tempe Spares Mfg location, and a Phoenix field service posting describes installing, maintaining and upgrading Applied Materials equipment at customer sites. These postings give no addresses or headcounts and may be removed when the roles are filled. No source found reports a construction start, opening date or address for the planned Chandler facility after December 2025. Company-wide, Applied Materials approved a workforce reduction in October 2025 that it expected to affect approximately four percent of its global workforce, with charges of approximately $160 million to $180 million; the annual report later recorded $181 million of restructuring charges in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025 [not independently verified]. In February 2026 the company agreed to pay $252.5 million to BIS, part of the U.S. Commerce Department, in an export-control settlement and to conduct internal audits of its export compliance program; its quarterly report for the period ended July 26, 2026 says the amount was paid in full [not independently verified]. Its fiscal 2025 annual report also disclosed Justice Department subpoenas seeking information related to certain federal award applications. A February 2026 filing says the Justice Department and the SEC closed their respective inquiries with no enforcement action, without naming this matter, and the quarterly report for the period ended July 26, 2026 does not repeat the subpoena disclosure, so its current status is not stated [not independently verified]. Public filings do not identify an Arizona-specific share of the workforce reduction, and neither the settlement nor the subpoenas is tied to Arizona in the filings.
Taken together, the verified facts show a California equipment maker whose Arizona presence is built around research with ASU in Tempe, where the shared center has operated since October 2025, and an announced $200 million plan for a Chandler plant to make parts for chipmaking equipment, which the company's announcement, as reproduced by AZ Big Media, called a new site under development in Arizona [not independently verified], and no update on it after December 2025 was found. No source found states how many people Applied Materials employs in Arizona.