US solar manufacturer Corning has started ingot and wafer production at its Michigan plant, during the third quarter of 2025.
Ramping up is expected to continue during Q4 2025, with the company expecting daily production of wafers to jump from thousands to more than one million in the last three months of 2025. Corning plans for its US-based production to drive US$2.5 billion in revenue by 2028.
Corning has already sold out all the polysilicon and wafer capacity for this year and secured purchases of more than 80% of its available capacity for the next five years.
The news comes nearly a year after the company unveiled plans to build a solar ingot and wafer manufacturing plant in Michigan, near the polysilicon manufacturing plant of its subsidiary Hemlock Semiconductor.
Wendell Weeks, president and CEO at Corning, said: “Over the last 18 months, we have built the largest solar ingot and wafer facility in the United States, co-located with our polysilicon manufacturing facility in Hemlock, Michigan. It was a significant undertaking.”
Weeks added during an earnings call that the company’s area of focus will be ingots and wafers, while sourcing the solar cells from other US producers. He added that: “We also wanted to have a go-to-market position in modules, primarily because we have some new innovations to bring to that, that could increase the conversion efficiency and provide some of the best products or maybe the best product in the world for solar is our hope.”
Corning bringing online its wafer plant also marks the return of solar wafer production in the US in nearly a decade.
“For the first time, a module can be completely US-made, from polysilicon to the module. This is probably the first time in a long time that this is possible. It might not be sufficient to meet demand, but it is a big step for US manufacturing,” said Moustafa Ramadan, head of market research at PV Tech Research.
A clear example of this is the supply agreement signed between Corning and US solar manufacturer T1 Energy in August of this year. In that deal, Corning would supply US-made polysilicon and wafers to T1 Energy, which aims to begin construction of its 5GW solar cell production plant in Q4 of this year and has already started assembling modules at its Dallas plant.