> Maybe fabs take longer than a couple years to set up regardless of money spent?Maybe fabs take a level of expertise that only a handful of people in the world have, and it's a matter of ramping up promising undergrads to that level which will take like 15+ years?
From the start of permitting to first tape out, I've heard five years for cutting edge, three to four for mid range (under 100nm), and two years for older processes. Subtract a year for expansions of existing facilities where hazmat permits and infrastructure already exist.
Far more than a handful of people in the world are qualified to set up a fab but it really is hard, time consuming work that requires a lot of expertise. While most of the equipment in a fab is customized off the shelf (not totally custom but not cookie cutter), each piece has to be carefully calibrated to fit in with the whole.
Stuff like HVAC, which is normally pretty predictable in commercial buildings, has to be custom designed for seasonal variations which differ from region to region while taking into account each piece of equipment's heat generation and stability needs. Tens if not hundreds of different robotic positioning and material handling systems need to be calibrated so that they can move wafers entire meters with a precision and accuracy measured in the tens or hundreds of nanometers. The design of the factory even needs to take into account regional variations in day to day humidity which usually takes a year just in data collection.
Building the concrete shell for a fab is easy. It's filling it with equipment that actually works together to produce cutting edge technology that is the expensive part.
