Report: Texas is out of running for new Apple campus

Apple Inc. has already eliminated Texas from the running for a planned new campus, according to an ABC News report.

The Silicon Valley giant announced this week that it will build a new campus and hire 20,000 U.S. workers for its new and existing campuses. But according to the ABC News interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook, that new campus will not be in Texas or California.

An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.

Apple is stepping up its U.S. investment and touting those it has already made, after being one of the companies targeted by President Donald Trump for sending jobs overseas.

The company pledged Wednesday that it would contribute more than $350 billion to the U.S. economy over the next five years. The company — which is the largest U.S. taxpayer — said it also expects to pay repatriation tax payments of about $38 billion, which are required by the new tax law.

Companies that bring back money stashed overseas this year will be taxed at a 15.5 percent rate, below the new 21 percent rate for U.S. corporate profits under the new law. As a whole, corporate America has an estimated $2.6 trillion in overseas cash, with most of that concentrated in the technology industry, with Apple sitting at the top of the heap.

As part of its plan for growth in the U.S., Apple said it will open a campus in a new location, which will initially focus on customer support. The company said the location will be announced this year.

Apple might have cut Texas and California from the list because the company already has a large presence in those states. Its headquarters are in Cupertino, Calif., and Apple has about 8,000 employ-

ees across Texas.

In Austin, Apple’s 38-acre complex at West Parmer Lane and Delcour Drive is home to the company’s 1.1 million-square-foot Americas Operations Center, which runs many of its corporate functions throughout the northern hemisphere.

Direct Apple employment in Austin has tripled in the last 10 years, according to the company, making it Apple’s second-largest U.S. hub outside of Cupertino. Late last year, Apple said its Austin workforce totaled about 6,500 people.

Apple has other Texas ties, too. It recently announced that it’ll help fund the opening of a new manufacturing plant in Sherman, which is about 65 miles north of Dallas. It’ll spend $390 million to ramp up production of a laser that’s used in the iPhone X’s facial recognition features. The new plant is owned by Finisar, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, and will employ 500 people.