Apple bringing thousands of jobs to Houston area
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Apple on Monday announced plans to invest more than $500 billion in the U.S. and hire 20,000 people over the next four years, with construction of a massive facility planned in Greater Houston.
Why it matters: Apple's announcement — which the company calls its largest-ever "spend commitment" — is the kind of win President Trump has been looking for with his push to move manufacturing back to the U.S.
- Apple's new investment — much of it in red states — lets Trump say to other companies: Apple can do it. Why can't (or won't) you?
State of play: Apple will build a new advanced AI server manufacturing factory near Houston, according to the company.
- The 250,000-square-foot facility, slated to open in 2026, "will create thousands of jobs," the announcement says.
- "The servers that will soon be assembled in Houston play a key role in powering Apple Intelligence, and are the foundation of Private Cloud Compute, which combines powerful AI processing with the most advanced security architecture ever deployed at scale for AI cloud computing," per the announcement.
Zoom out: Most of the new jobs will focus on research and development, silicon engineering, software development, and AI and machine learning.
- Apple plans to greatly expand chip and server manufacturing in the U.S., plus skills development for students and workers across the country.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said in the announcement: "We are bullish on the future of American innovation, and we're proud to build on our longstanding U.S. investments with this $500 billion commitment to our country's future."
The backstory: Trump met with Cook on Thursday in the Oval Office, then got so excited that he revealed the plans prematurely.
- Trump said on-camera while meeting with governors that Cook is "investing hundreds of billions of dollars. I hope he's announced it — I hope I didn't announce it, but what the hell? All I do is tell the truth — that's what he told me. Now he has to do it, right?"