Apple Investing $1B In New Texas Campus

Apple Inc. is planning to spend $1 billion to build a new 133-acre corporate campus in North Austin that initially will employ up to 5,000 people, cementing Austin’s status as the high-tech company’s largest hub outside of its California headquarters.

According to The Austin Statesman, the facility will be less than a mile from Apple’s existing main Austin campus and eventually could expand to accommodate up to 15,000 workers, the company said. Apple employs about 6,200 people in Austin now. Counting contractors, its current Austin workforce numbers about 7,000.

The new Austin campus is part of a wider Apple expansion that will see the tech giant build new facilities in Seattle, San Diego and Los Angeles with “over 1,000 employees” each, and add “hundreds of new jobs” in New York, Pittsburgh, Boulder, Colo., Boston and Portland, Ore., the company said. None of those facilities will be as big as the new Austin campus.

“Apple is proud to bring new investment, jobs and opportunity to cities across the United States and to significantly deepen our quarter century partnership with the city and people of Austin,” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said in a written statement. “Talent, creativity, and tomorrow’s breakthrough ideas aren’t limited by region or zip code, and, with this new expansion, we’re redoubling our commitment to cultivating the high-tech sector and workforce nationwide.”

Apple is in line to receive as much as $25 million in taxpayer-funded grants for the new Austin campus from the state’s deal-closing Texas Enterprise Fund, based on investment and job creation at the site. It also is seeking a 15-year property tax abatement from Williamson County, where the project is located just over the line from Travis County, that could be worth tens of millions of dollars over the life of the deal, although specific numbers weren’t available Wednesday.

Apple had said last January that it would invest more than $30 billion in the United States over the next five years and create more than 20,000 new jobs, through expansion of some of its existing corporate campuses and by opening a new one.

Apple shares have been under pressure in recent months amid worries about demand for its new iPhones. The tech titan has also been in the crosshairs of the trade war between the U.S. and China. President Donald Trump threatened to place a 10 percent tariff on iPhones and laptops made in China last month.