Apple Inc. will invest more than $500 billion over the next four years to expand innovation and high-skilled manufacturing to support a range of initiatives from AI to silicon engineering to skills development for students and workers.
This includes doubling its advanced manufacturing fund, opening a new advanced manufacturing facility in Houston, Texas, for servers, creating an academy in Michigan to train manufacturers and growing its R&D investments in the U.S. to support silicon engineering.
New facility
The Houston facility will begin production of servers in Houston later this year with the 250,000 sq ft manufacturing facility slated to open in 2026, creating thousands of jobs. Apple said these servers were manufactured previously outside the U.S.
The facility will help to reduce the energy demands of Apple data centers and it will continue to expand data center capacity in:
- North Carolina
- Iowa
- Oregon
- Arizona
- Nevada
An engineer examines a semiconductor wafer in a cleanroom. Apple said it will pledge a multi-billion-dollar commitment to produce advanced silicon in TSMC’s Fab 21 facility in Arizona. Source: Apple
Doubling the fund
The U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Fund, which was created in 2017 to support manufacturing jobs and innovation in the country, will be doubled under the investment from $5 billion to $10 billion. It will focus on advanced manufacturing and skills development in America.
It includes a multi-billion-dollar commitment from Apple to produce advanced silicon in TSMC’s Fab 21 facility in Arizona. Apple will be that fab’s largest customer. Mass production of Apple chips at the fab began in January.
The fund has started projects in 13 states geared toward helping local businesses, train workers and creating a range of manufacturing processes and materials for Apple devices, the company said.
R&D
Apple said it plans to hire about 20,000 employees, the majority of which will be focused on R&D, software development, silicon engineering and AI and machine learning.
This will include investment in R&D hubs across the country and growing teams focused on areas like:
- Custom silicon
- Hardware engineering
- Software development
- Artificial intelligence
- Machine learning
