A Chip Upstart In Galilee
No freelance chipmaker outside Asia rivals Tower in size
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Bankers laughed in 1992, when Yoav Nissan-Cohen and Rafael M. Levin asked for money to buy a National Semiconductor Corp. chip plant in Migdal Ha'emek, Israel, where they worked. They wanted to convert the plant, which National had put up for sale, into a "foundry" that would make chips under contract for other companies.
The bankers' derision was understandable. Contract manufacturing of chips wasn't considered a healthy business in the early 1990s. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., today the world's largest foundry, hadn't yet proved that such chip factories can be highly profitable.