Apple to build $1B campus in Austin, Texas
Also to open office in Seattle, create thousands of jobs
AUSTIN, Texas — Apple plans to build a $1-billion US campus in Austin, Texas, that will create at least 5,000 jobs ranging from engineers to call-centre agents while adding more lustre to a city that has already become a bustling tech hub.
The decision, announced Thursday, comes 11 months after Apple CEO Tim Cook disclosed plans to open a major office outside California on the heels of a massive tax cut on overseas profits, which prompted the company to bring about $250 billion back to the U.S.
The company said it will open offices in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City, California, each employing at least 1,000 workers over the next three years. Apple also pledged to add hundreds of jobs each in New York; Pittsburgh; Boston; Boulder, Colorado; and Portland, Oregon.
“They are just picking America’s most established superstar cities and tech hubs,” said Richard Florida, an urban development expert at the University of Toronto.
Apple’s scattershot expansion reflects the increasing competition for engineers in Silicon Valley, which has long been the world’s high-tech capital. The bidding for programmers is driving salaries higher, which in turn is catapulting the average prices of homes in many parts of the San Francisco Bay Area above $1 million. Many high-tech workers are thus choosing to live elsewhere, causing major tech employers such as Apple, Amazon and Google to look in new places for the employees they need to pursue their future ambitions.
“Talent, creativity and tomorrow’s breakthrough ideas aren’t limited by region or ZIP code,” Cook said in a statement.
Cities around the U.S. offered financial incentives in an attempt to land Apple’s new campus, but Cook avoided a high-profile competition that pitted them against one another, as Amazon had before deciding to build huge new offices in New York and Virginia.
Virtually all of the jobs in Seattle and San Diego will be in technology — a field where sixfigure paycheques plus stock options are standard. The jobs in Culver City, near Hollywood, will also be in digital music and video, two areas Apple is expanding in to boost its subscription entertainment offerings.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hailed Apple’s 280,000-square-metre campus in his state as a milestone development that “truly elevates Austin as one of the premier technology hubs in the entire world.”