Publications
Publications
- April 2025
- HBS Case Collection
The CHIPS Program Office (Abridged)
By: Mitch Weiss and Sebastian Negron-Reichard
Abstract
In February 2023, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo weighed signing off on a Notice of Funding Opportunity (“NOFO”) with at least one unconventional provision: a pre-application (“pre-app”) to the actual application for parts of $39 billion in direct semiconductor manufacturing incentives. The funding had been made available through the U.S. Department of Commerce by the CHIPS and Science Act (“CHIPS”) passed a few months earlier. Her team had also proposed additional measures for the NOFO. They’d added upside sharing provisions to align incentives. They’d included funding milestones so that only awardees making progress would receive additional funds. And they’d drafted a rolling process, so apps didn’t have to be evaluated all at once. Each mechanism, along with the pre-apps, they hoped, would help regain U.S. technological leadership while protecting taxpayer funds. Raimondo would have to decide whether the NOFO as conceived set the stage to do precisely that.
Keywords
Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Government Administration; Government Legislation; Motivation and Incentives; Semiconductor Industry; Public Administration Industry; United States
Citation
Weiss, Mitch, and Sebastian Negron-Reichard. "The CHIPS Program Office (Abridged)." Harvard Business School Case 825-192, April 2025.