Happy Wednesday! Stepping away isn't always the same as giving up.

🌥️ Today's weather: High near 97 and a chance of rain tonight.

🎵 Sounds like: "My Computer"

🌧️ Situational awareness: Tropical Storm Edouard made landfall yesterday along the Texas-Louisiana border and could bring rainfall southeast of Dallas-Fort Worth this evening, per NBC5.

Today's newsletter is 957 technical words — a 3.5-minute read.

California has Silicon Valley. Texas has Silicon Prairie.

Why it matters: Sherman, just south of the Texas-Oklahoma border, has become a hub for semiconductor manufacturing amid the AI boom.

• Tech companies are transforming the once sleepy college town into an important job center in North Texas.

The big picture: Austin College, a private liberal arts school, has been in Sherman since 1876. But manufacturing is the city's most vital industry.

• Sherman's population increased around 20% between 2020 and 2025. The city had around 52,000 residents as of July 2025, per Census Bureau estimates.

What they're saying: "You have to pass by cornfields and cattle to get here. But once you're here, you have everything you need," Sherman mayor Shawn Teamann tells Axios.

• Yes, but: The city's history also includes the 1930 Sherman Riot, in which a mob lynched a Black farm worker and burned down the Black business district.

Follow the money: Apple sources components for its iPhones and iPads from Sherman-based companies GlobalWafers America and Coherent and Texas Instruments' SM1 plant.

• Coherent is also working with AI chipmaker Nvidia to boost the production of indium phosphide wafers in Sherman. The companies say the wafers form the optical backbone of modern AI infrastructure.

Reality check: Cities often experience growing pains — such as traffic congestion and insufficient water infrastructure — as their population increases.

• The Texas Department of Transportation is expanding U.S. 75 to help ease Sherman's traffic congestion.

The upside: Sherman's water rights to Lake Texoma, one of the country's largest reservoirs, may help the city buck the water supply crisis that other growing cities are experiencing.

• "We have the ability to pull water from the lake, treat it and send it out into the pipes to all of our businesses and residents, which gives us the ability to be efficient and to be scalable," Teamann says.

What we're watching: How Sherman's growth influences its identity as a big city with a small-town feel.

There is a high chance that your most-used electronics — such as those in your car and phone — include materials manufactured in Richardson or Sherman.

Why it matters: Although Americans usually associate Texas Instruments with graphing calculators, semiconductor chips are the Dallas-based company's biggest revenue generator.

How it works: Semiconductor chips function like the brains of electronics. The chips are intricately designed to process electronic signals and direct specific outcomes, such as powering on a laptop or starting the engine of a car.

• "Ever since really the '90s, semiconductors have been transformative in our lives," TI process engineering branch manager Kevin Gable tells Axios.

State of play: The company opened its Sherman site in December, with one factory in production and three more planned if the company needs more space in the future.

• SM1 manufactures large 300mm wafers that are sent to the company's other sites to be processed into individual chips. Those chips are tested and packaged before being sent to TI's clients, which include Apple, Ford, Nvidia and SpaceX.

Fun fact: TI can manufacture over 1 million chips an hour company-wide.

• The Sherman site will be capable of producing more than 100 million chips per day once all four factories reach full production, Gable says.

The bottom line: "The amount of control and precision that goes into building each of these devices, depending on what the end product is, is hard to really put into words — but it's something that we love doing here," Gable says.

🏈 Victory+ was dissolved by its parent company and will no longer stream local high school football games. (DMN)

❌ City Center Fort Worth says it will no longer host its annual tower climb in honor of the 9/11 first responders, citing logistical challenges. (WFAA)

🪧 Almost 100 people rallied outside the Tarrant County Jail yesterday to protest the deaths of six inmates this year. (KERA)

💬 Quote du jour:

"As I have taught my three young sons: when you fall short, you stand up and take full responsibility."

An expansive cleanroom inside Texas Instrument's factory in Sherman was designed to be 100 times more sterile than a hospital's operating room.

Vibe check: Employees and visitors must go through a smock room —putting on hair nets, goggles, shoe covers, hoods and other protective gear — before going inside the cleanroom.

• Gable describes the warehouse-sized space as "one of the cleanest environments in the world."

How it works: An automated material handling system moves stacks of wafers from step to step within the cleanroom, with several quality checks along the way.

• One of those steps involves a photolithography tool that forms blueprint-like patterns on each chip.
• Humans oversee the process, maintain the equipment and respond to any issues flagged by the technology.

The bottom line: "Oftentimes people think, 'Hey, we must be wearing all this stuff to protect ourselves.' In reality, we're protecting the wafers," Gable says. "Even a single skin cell can kill some of our devices."

This newsletter was edited by Bob Gee.

Our picks:

⏳ Naheed is wondering if she should start using a pomodoro timer again.

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