Solid-state memory chip company Solidigm is putting $25 million into tenant improvements in its new research and development offices in Rancho Cordova.
Solidigm, which formed last year when South Korean memory chip maker SK hynix Inc. bought Intel Corp.'s flash memory business, leased three buildings in Rancho Cordova for the employees it pulled out of Intel (Nasdaq: INTC).
The tenant improvements are for a total of 230,000 square feet of office space through three buildings leased in the White Rock Corporate Campus.
To manage the improvement project, Solidigm has engaged Skanska USA Building Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Skanska Group, a construction firm based in Stockholm, that focuses on sustainability. The value of tenant improvements and the contractor were shown in applications for building permits. Presumably with the investment in office space, Solidigm wants its employees to come into the offices.
The first Solidigm building locally to open to employees will be office space. It's expected to open in February, said spokeswoman Catherine Roberts.
A research and development lab office will open later this year, she said.
Solidigm pulled about 800 employees out of Intel, many of them from its Folsom campus. The Solidigm employees are working in temporary space or remotely. There are about 1,000 Solidigm employees now tied to the Rancho Cordova office, and the company anticipates growing the operation to 1,900 employees locally by 2027.
In addition to engineers and scientists, the Rancho Cordova offices will include teams in sales, marketing, communications, human resources, operations and finance, Roberts said.
SK hynix is a South Korean supplier of dynamic random-access memory chips and flash memory chips. It's the world's second-largest maker of memory chips.
The addition of Solidigm’s operation adds to the chip research and design labs in the region, which include the large R&D offices in Folsom of Intel and Micron Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: MU). Intel’s local campus has more than 5,300 employees and is the region's largest tech employer. The local Micron offices employ about 300. The local Micron operation was also spun out of Intel.
