Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) announced plans to spend $1 billion on a new campus in North Carolina, creating 3,000 new jobs in the Raleigh area. The jobs will be in software engineering and machine learning, making a significant expansion for the iPhone maker, as most of its engineering has been based in Cupertino, Calif.
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Details on Apple’s new campus
The new campus will be located in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, which is bounded by the University of North Carolina, Duke University and North Carolina University. WRAL reports that Apple will receive millions of dollars in tax incentives in exchange for meeting requirements for jobs. The company will also invest $100 million in programs at community colleges and schools in North Carolina and $110 million in infrastructure spending on everything from broadband to schools.
According to CNBC, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams earned their MBAs at Duke. Apple Senior Vice President Eddy Cue graduated from Duke. The new location will give Apple access to a wider engineering talent pool and reduce its reliance on California, where house prices and the cost of living are high.
Apple isn’t the only one expanding into North Carolina. The Triangle area is becoming one of the top life science and high-tech hubs in the country. The Raleigh-Durham metropolitan area hosts IBM’s biggest campus, Red Hat, which is part of IBM (NYSE:IBM), and Lenovo (OTCMKTS:LNVGY), the top PC seller in the world. Other companies with offices in the area include Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL), Cisco Systems Inc (NASDAQ:CSCO), NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) and Cree, Inc. (NASDAQ:CREE).
Other expansion plans
Apple is also planning another new campus in Austin, Tex., slated to open in 2022. The iPhone maker isn’t the only company in Silicon Valley expanding outside the region. The iPhone maker also said today that it’s expanding quickly in other cities where it has engineering operations. It intends to create 5,000 jobs in San Diego, 3,000 jobs in Los Angeles and 700 jobs in Boulder, Colo. by 2026.
Apple also has 1,000 employees in Seattle and plans to double that number. In all, the company said it intends to add 20,000 jobs in the U.S. in the next five years.
Despite the expansion out of Silicon Valley, Apple will retain its headquarters there. It employs about 25,000 people in Cupertino, including 12,000 workers in its headquarters. Including retail employees, the company has 147,000 full-time employees there, according to a filing from last year.
