#embedded chips

August 28, 2025 /SemiMedia/ — Apple will begin producing critical semiconductors at Texas Instruments’ (TI) new fabs in the United States, deepening its commitment to U.S. chip manufacturing. TI has launched a $60 billion expansion plan that includes seven new fabs in Texas and Utah. The company’s Sherman site is expected to start full-scale production of 300mm wafers by late 2025. Apple CEO…

Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY, Aug. 9, 2017

LOS ANGELES--You will get chipped. It’s just a matter of time.

In the aftermath of a Wisconsin firm embedding microchips in employees last week to ditch company badges and corporate logons, the Internet has entered into full-throated debate.

Religious activists are so appalled, they’ve been penning nasty 1-star reviews of the company, Three Square Market, on Google, Glassdoor and social media.

On the flip side, seemingly everyone else wants to know: Is this what real life is going to be like soon at work? Will I be chipped?

“It will happen to everybody,” says Noelle Chesley, 49, associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “But not this year, and not in 2018. Maybe not my generation, but certainly that of my kids.”

Gene Munster, an investor and analyst at Loup Ventures, is an advocate for augmented reality, virtual reality and other new technologies. He thinks embedded chips in human bodies is 50 years away. “In 10 years, Facebook, Google, Apple and Tesla will not have their employees chipped,” he says. “You’ll see some extreme forward-looking tech people adopting it, but not large companies.”

The idea of being chipped has too “much negative connotation” today, but by 2067 “we will have been desensitized by the social stigma,” Munster says.

For now, Three Square Market, or 32M, hasn’t offered concrete benefits for getting chipped beyond badge and log-on stats. Munster says it was a “PR stunt” for the company to get attention to its product and it certainly succeeded, getting the small start-up air play on CBS, NBC and ABC, and generating headlines worldwide. The company, which sells corporate cafeteria kiosks designed to replace vending machines, would like the kiosks to handle cashless transactions.

This would go beyond paying with your smartphone. Instead, chipped customers would simply wave their hands in lieu of Apple Pay and other mobile-payment systems.

The benefits don’t stop there. In the future, consumers could zip through airport scanners sans passport or driver’s license; open doors; start cars; and operate home automation systems. All of it, if the technology pans out, with the simple wave of a hand.

The embedded chip is not a GPS tracker, which is what many critics initially feared. However, analysts believe future chips will track our every move.

For example, pets for years have been embedded with chips to store their name and owner contact. Indeed, 32M isn’t the first company to embed chips in employees. In 2001, Applied Digital Solutions installed the “VeriChip” to access medical records but the company eventually changed hands and stopped selling the chip in 2010.

In Sweden, BioHax says nearly 3,000 customers have had its chip embedded to do many things, including ride the national rail system without having to show the conductor a ticket.

In the U.S., Dangerous Things, a Seattle-based firm, says it has sold “tens of thousands” of chips to consumers via its website. The chip and installation cost about $200.

After years of being a subculture, “the time is now” for chips to be more commonly used, says Amal Graafstra, founder of Dangerous Things. “We’re going to start to see chip implants get the same realm of acceptance as piercings and tattoos do now.”

In other words, they’ll be more visible, but not mainstream yet.

“It becomes part of you the way a cellphone does,” Graafstra says. “You can never forget it, and you can’t lose it. And you have the capability to communicate with machines in a way you couldn’t before.”

But after what we saw in Wisconsin last week, what’s next for the U.S. workforce? A nation of workers chipping into their pods at Federal Express, General Electric, IBM, Microsoft and other top corporations?

Experts contend consumers will latch onto chips before companies do.

Chesley says corporations are slower to respond to massive change and that there will be an age issue. Younger employees will be more open to it, while older workers will balk. “Most employers who have inter-generational workforces might phase it in slowly,” she says. “I can’t imagine people my age and older being enthusiastic about having devices put into their bodies.”

Adds Alec Levenson, a researcher at University of Southern California’s Center for Effective Organizations, “The vast majority of people will not put up with this.”

Three Square Market said the chips are voluntary, but Chesley says that if a company announces a plan to be chipped, the expectation is that you will get chipped--or risk losing out on advancement, raises and being a team player.

“That’s what we’re worried about,” says Bryan Allen, chief of staff for state Rep. Tina Davis (D), who is introducing a bill in Pennsylvania to outlaw mandatory chip embedding. “If the tech is out there, what’s to stop an employer from saying either you do this, or you can’t work here anymore.”

Should future corporations dive in to chipping their employees, they will have huge issues of “trust” to contend with, says Kent Grayson, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

“You’ve got to have a lot of trust to put one of those in your body,” Grayson says. Workers will need assurances the chip is healthy, can’t be hacked, and its information is private, he says.

Meanwhile, religious advocates have taken to social media to express their displeasure about chipping, flooding 32M’s Facebook page with comments like “boycott,” “completely unnecessary” and “deplorable.”

Get used to it, counsels Chesley.

Ten years ago, employees didn’t look at corporate e-mail over the weekend. Now they we do, “whether we like it or not,” he says.

By Charlie Osborne, Zero Day, February 17, 2015

CANCUN, MEXICO: If you could replace your car keys, website login data, credit cards and bus passes with a chip embedded under your skin, would you?

This is a question addressed this week at the Kaspersky Labs Security Analyst Summit by biohacker Hannes Sjoblad from BioNyfiken. A pioneer in what has been deemed ‘biohacking,” Sjoblad is the leader of a group of biohackers in Sweden who took the first step in experimenting with embedded NFC chips--by having them implanted into their own hands.

Speaking to attendees at the event, Sjoblad said the controversial technology is in “early stages,” but the future is ripe for us to become cyborgs in one way or another.

BioNyfiken, a grassroot open network based in Sweden, is a breeding ground for advancement in the field of biohacking. While it began with a small group of people willing to experiment with everything from “biology to cells to plants to Homo sapiens,” in the last few months, over 300 people in the country have now volunteered to have NFC chips embedded in the skin between thumb and forefinger in their hands.

The first step was a successful crowdfunded Indiegogo campaign. The xNT NFC chip implant captured the attention not only of the media but the interest of the general public, and now the network is in full swing. Sjoblad himself has the implant, which he says he has developed in the last few months to replace not only his house keys, but also a bike lock, shop memberships around Sweden and his business card.

However, the biohacker says chips under the skin have the potential to do much more--and we can expect use to become commonplace in the future.

While the idea of chips embedded under the skin brings to mind the idea of cyborgs, Sjoblad was quick to point out at the conference that they are “already among us”--thanks to pacemakers, medical implants, insulin pumps and neurally controlled prosthetics. Over time, the development and cost of materials to produce such technology becomes cheaper--only 10 years ago mapping the human genome cost over $100,000, now it is closer to $10,000--and in the same way, rapid miniaturization of technology, lower production costs and demand for increased connectivity will propel under-the-skin smart technology forward.

For those concerned with privacy, the biohacker noted how wearable devices and mobile technology are already collecting and sharing our personal data. Where embedded NFC chips come in, however, is that we can achieve the same results but with “less clutter.”

“The weakness in wearables is that people get bored,” Sjoblad said. “It is simply another thing that clutters people’s lives [..] but we want something which is always on, always there and does not disturb your life.”

The biohacker believes that the future of implants can be found in ways to de-clutter your daily life. Keys, credit cards and smartphones are all things we carry around to identify ourselves, but one day, simply swiping your hand could replace these items.

Sjoblad told attendees that by giving his body “the same language” as a computer system via the embedded NFC chip, life can be made more seamless and efficient. This may then open the way for a variety of uses and potentially an ecosystem around the platform--especially as the Internet of Things (IoT) emerges.

What uses could smart implants have in the future? According to Sjoblad, identification and information are the main categories where embedded chips can perform. In terms of identification, embedded NFC chips could be used to access buildings, activate devices--such as guns locked to one owner--and could also be used to personalize your daily activities. For example, if you share a car with your significant other, swiping the steering wheel with your NFC-embedded hand could trigger the vehicle to adjust everything from seat position to radio channel based on the preference of the user.

NFC chips under the skin could also be used to authenticate a bank or financial account. Sjoblad says it “makes more sense to have an implant as part of two-factor authentication,” perhaps one day replacing smartphone PIN codes sent to verify transactions. In addition, the biohacker believes implants could also be used for activity logging, health, and for information retrieval--including public encryption keys, your business card, virtual currency wallet or even your shopping list.

So what does the future hold for biohacking? According to Sjoblad, biotechnology and embedded NFC chips will eventually become a quick digital identification process used for everyday purposes. The biohacker says we are likely to see an uptake in chip use if the system is implemented in ways which make everyday life less cluttered and complicated--such as a way to access and pay for public transport.

Sjoblad also believes health monitoring will eventually move under the skin--which will result in better data capture and intrusion, insofar that wearable devices designed for health will no longer be necessary.

Finally, the biohacker says that in the future we are likely to see embedded NFC chips improve security and privacy by replacing the traditional password and account login systems.