Apple will establish a 250,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Houston by 2026, the company announced on Monday. This initiative is part of Apple’s broader commitment to invest more than $500 billion in the United States over the next four years, with a focus on bolstering “Apple Intelligence,” its proprietary artificial intelligence system.
Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, emphasized the company’s dedication to the U.S. in a statement released Monday. “We are bullish on the future of American innovation, and we’re proud to build on our long-standing U.S. investments with this $500 billion commitment to our country’s future.” Cook further stated, “From doubling our advanced manufacturing fund, to building advance technology in Texas, we’re thrilled to expand our support for American manufacturing. And we’ll keep working with people and companies across this country to help write an extraordinary new chapter in the history of American innovation.”
The new Houston facility will produce components for Apple’s artificial intelligence system. It is expected to generate thousands of jobs in the region. In addition to the new facility, Apple plans to hire 20,000 new employees in the next four years, focusing on research and development, silicon engineering, software development, and machine learning. The company also announced it will work with manufacturing partners to begin production of the artificial intelligence servers in Houston later this year. These servers were previously manufactured outside the United States.
According to the company, the servers 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 advance security architecture ever deployed at scale for AI cloud computing.” Apple did not immediately specify the exact location of the facility within Houston in a Monday post to its website. The servers are designed to be energy efficient to reduce the energy demands of Apple’s data centers, which already operate on 100 percent renewable energy.
Apple is also expanding its operations in other states including North Carolina, Iowa, Oregon, Arizona, and Nevada.
