Forge Nano broke ground on a major Morrisville expansion intended to create about 250 jobs and produce advanced batteries for defense and aerospace customers. Forge Nano plans a 315,000-square-foot campus backed by $100 million in federal support, with defense-battery production targeted for 2028. Forge Nano expects to create about 250 manufacturing, engineering and operations jobs in Morrisville.
A $100 million Energy Department grant supports expansion of the existing 100,000-square-foot site into a campus of nearly 315,000 square feet. The company says production will begin in 2028 and reach about three gigawatt-hours of batteries annually. The groundbreaking establishes that the project has moved beyond an announcement, but the stated capacity and employment remain forecasts. Incentive and grant conditions provide later checkpoints for separating promised benefits from delivered results.
Forge Nano plans to invest as much as $330 million in the facility. Samsung SDI is expected to provide manufacturing expertise and buy cells produced at the site. North Carolina approved up to $1.5 million in incentives if the company meets investment and hiring targets. The security rationale is specific: advanced batteries power radios, drones and military vehicles, and sourcing rules are changing. The local economic case is related but distinct, depending on wage levels, supplier activity and whether the company meets its hiring commitments.
Federal defense-sourcing rules scheduled for 2028 will restrict purchases of certain battery cells made by foreign adversaries. Economic-development announcements state targets that are later tested through construction, hiring and production milestones.
Large public grants can accelerate capacity that private markets may not finance on their own. The current evidentiary limit is that the final hiring pace, delivery of the full federal grant and future production economics were not yet established.
The next factual record will come from construction and grant disbursement milestones and job creation, customer orders and 2028 production readiness. Until those records appear, the account remains bounded by the cited reporting, measurements and explicitly attributed statements.