Apple invests $1bn in Texas

While Amazon was holding its very public beauty contest to determine where it would locate its new headquarters, Apple was in stealth mode as it underwent a site selection process for a new campus. Its decision: a $1bn campus in North Austin, Texas. At the same time the company announced plans to expand its workforce in several cities around the US, including establishing new sites in Seattle, Washington and San Diego and Culver City, California. It also announced a $10bn US data centre initiative.

Apple’s 133-acre Austin campus will initially accommodate 5000 additional employees and it has the capacity to grow to 15,000. The expansion is expected to make Apple, which already employs 6200 people in the area, the largest private employer in this tech-oriented city.

“We’re excited they are bringing more middle-skilled jobs to the area,” said Austin mayor Steve Adler. Indeed the list of job titles suggest a number of well-paying jobs will created in such areas as engineering, R&D, operations, finance, sales and customer support.

Elsewhere in the US, Apple has a three-year plan to expand its employee base to more than 1000 workers in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City each. It will also add hundreds of new jobs in Pittsburgh, New York, Boulder, Boston and Portland, Oregon. Meanwhile the company recently opened an office in Nashville, Tennessee (where Amazon is locating a service centre as part of its headquarters strategy) and Apple’s Miami office is projected to double in size.

The company also plans to invest $10bn in US data centres over the next five years, including $4.5bn this year and next. Apple’s data centres in North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada are currently being expanded and in Iowa, development preparations are underway for a data centre in Waukee.