Apple is the latest tech giant to place a significant bet on Texas, committing to a $500 million investment that includes a new manufacturing facility in Houston. This move underscores a larger trend: the Lone Star State is rapidly emerging as a focal point for the burgeoning artificial intelligence industry, attracting substantial infrastructure investments from several major players.
In a recent press release, Apple announced plans to open a 250,000 square-foot manufacturing facility in Houston next year. This facility will be dedicated to producing servers, previously manufactured outside the United States, that are essential to powering Apple Intelligence. According to the company, the new plant is expected to generate thousands of jobs.
Beyond the Houston facility, Apple’s $500 million commitment will support a diverse range of initiatives. These include funding for AppleTV+ productions and a doubling of the company’s advanced manufacturing fund, increasing it from $5 billion to $10 billion. As part of the broader expansion, Apple has started producing advanced silicon at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation’s (TSMC) facility in Arizona while also increasing its data center capacity in North Carolina, Iowa, Oregon, Arizona, and Nevada.
Apple isn’t the only major tech company that has recently announced major Texas-based infrastructure projects. In January, former President Donald Trump revealed a joint venture between OpenAI, Softbank, Oracle, and MGX. This collaboration aims to construct substantial AI infrastructure across the United States, under the banner of The Stargate Project. OpenAI anticipates that the venture will generate hundreds of thousands of jobs and is starting by developing a large data center in Abilene, Texas.
Google also disclosed plans last year to invest $1 billion in Texas infrastructure. The state’s appeal as a data center hub isn’t new; the Dallas-Fort Worth area already ranks among the largest data center markets nationwide, second only to Northern Virginia, CBRE reports. Furthermore, data center activity in the Austin-San Antonio region is experiencing rapid growth, with construction activity more than quadrupling in just a year. CBRE noted in a report that if all the current construction in progress were completed immediately, the Austin/San Antonio market would become the second-biggest data center market in the country, following only Northern Virginia.
A primary driver behind this surge of interest in Texas is the state’s comparatively affordable energy costs. The state is a particularly attractive location for tech firms because of those lower costs, which can translate to significant savings. As of November 2024, the average price of industrial electricity in Texas was 6.25 cents per kilowatt hour, while in California it was 19.15 cents per kilowatt hour, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
