Hallelujah!

Rejoice New York! Regale, Capital Region! After more than a decade of governmental planning, prostituting, proselytizing and pontificating, officials from Advanced Micro Devices have announced they plan to move forward with their long-anticipated chip fabrication plant in proposed Luther Forest Technology Park in Malta. The new plant will bathe New York with untold riches, spreading highways of gold from the nanotechnology facility in Albany to the bumper-crop of engineers being cultivated at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, turning the frightfully industry-free Hudson Valley into a burgeoning Mecca of the high-tech industry.

AMD, who some have and continue to regard as the Capital Region’s reigning Messiah, announced the news abruptly this morning, when they unveiled a deal to sell a good number of their assets to a shadow company owned solely by the government of the wealthiest city among the United Arab Emirates. This deal will create a partnership between the failing AMD and Abu Dhabi, which will then create a wholly new company that will build the $3.2 billion $4.5 billion chip fabrication plant in Malta.

All this and more will occur once New York State opens up its purse strings and doles out the $1.2 billion in aid formerly promised to AMD when they were the sole developer of the project. Ironically, this aid is just a hair short of the roughly $1.2 billion of debt AMD transferred to Advanced Technology Investment Company, the fledgling business created by Abu Dhabi and the Mubadala Development Company to “generate returns that deliver long‐term benefits to the Emirate.”

“This event will certainly go down as the most important transaction in the history of AMD and one of the most in the history of the semiconductor industry,” said Dirk Meyer, AMD’s President and CEO, during a telephone news conference Tuesday morning.

The new company –now called the Foundry –will have a split ownership between AMD and ATIC, which will own a majority of shares. AMD’s Hector Ruiz will assume duties as the new company’s chairman of the board of directors and Doug Grose, now the senior vice president of AMD, will become the CEO. In total, the Foundry Company will represent a $5.7 billion investment, which involves a 12-month agreement with the aforementioned Mubadala Development Company.

“It begins with great prospects,” said Waleed Al Mokarrab, the chairman, ATIC. “It has strong leadership, strong technology and a strong and sound financial basis.”

Let’s pause here and take a breath. Is your head spinning yet? Are you drunk on the idea of one of the world’s richest cities showering gold and platinum confetti over Saratoga County? Or are you just a bit sketched out by the fact that AMD’s rapidly deteriorating business has suddenly snagged interest of a bunch of investors who are looking to maximize on their return during a period of almost unprecedented global economic turmoil.

The timing of the deal comes as Gov. David Paterson is calling state legislators back to Albany to bridge the growing budget gap, which also happens to be around $1.2 billion. Still, Paterson says the AMD project is worth it: 1,500 high-tech positions for the long term and 600 construction jobs in the short term. And he’s basically right, even if it spells doom for many of the state-supported programs acting as a safety net for many underprivileged New Yorkers. The return of industry is the only thing that can save the state’s dire economic forecast. The lack of industry has created a void that can’t be patched by adding service-related jobs or creating market bubbles.

“Now we believe the money is going to be there,” he told the New York Post’s Fred Dicker Tuesday morning. “It could be one of the most significant technological developments this country has ever seen.”

But there’s still an air of doubt about the project, lingering like ill-timed flatulence in a closed elevator. Even during Tuesday’s conference call, the AMD press flack warned the listening reporters and analysts that the statements made by officials “shouldn’t be relied on as predictions of future events” and may face “uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations.” In other words, everyone is ready to sign on the dotted line except AMD and their new Arabian partner.

So what happens when the incentives run out? What happens when New York begins to tax the Arabs like the rest of the state? What happens if the state forks over the cash and suddenly “current expectations” don’t dictate such a project? Who buys all the damn chips that “the Foundry Company” produces if AMD suddenly goes belly up? And what will be the inevitable push-back from the almighty Intel in response to this bombshell announcement by their leading competitor?

Update: Sure enough, Intel has some serious questions about the Foundry Co. deal. Turns out the new deal might violate an agreement they had in place with AMD. Putting it in more succinct terms, stop the backslapping and get the lawyers on the horn. We have a multi-million dollar international lawsuit in the works here.

Well folks, these are questions for a later date. This day is reserved for the architects of this deal to reach down into the tray of the slot machine they’ve been sitting at for the past two years and grab the one shinny coin the damn thing has spit out over all that time. It’s also time for them to take that coin, plug it back into the one-armed bandit, and let this fucker ride. Who knows? This baby might still come up sevens.