Apple Vows to Build A.I. Servers in Houston and Spend $500 Billion in U.S.
The New York Times
The company pledged the multibillion-dollar investment over the next four years and said it would create 20,000 jobs. The Texas facility is set to open in 2026.
Days after Apple’s chief executive met with President Trump, the company said on Monday that it planned to spend $500 billion and hire 20,000 people in the United States over the next four years and open a factory in Texas to make the machines that power the company’s push into artificial intelligence.
“We are bullish on the future of American innovation, and we’re proud to build on our longstanding U.S. investments,” Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said in a statement. The company made similar, smaller pledges during the Biden administration and Mr. Trump’s first term, though it has not yet followed through on some of those promises.
Mr. Cook met with Mr. Trump last week. After that meeting, Mr. Trump said Apple would shift production to the United States: “They’re going to build here instead because they don’t want to pay the tariffs,” he said in a speech to a gathering of governors.
With its investment, Apple said it would begin manufacturing artificial intelligence servers at a new 250,000-square-foot facility in Houston next year. Those servers, which will be made by the Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn, will help the company expand its data center capacity in North Carolina, Oregon, Arizona and Nevada.
Apple will continue to make the bulk of what it sells — iPhones, iPads and Macs — in Asia. Its overseas manufacturing footprint has been a point of contention with Mr. Trump since before he was first elected president in 2016. For years, he has called on Apple to “start building their damn computers and things in this country, instead of in other countries.”
As the first Trump administration ratcheted up tariffs on China in 2019, Apple began shifting some of its manufacturing to Vietnam, India and other Asian countries. But it didn’t bring any of that production back to the United States.
