Apple on Monday announced the company will invest more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years, including plans to build a new factory and hire 20,000 people in the country, just days after the iPhone maker's CEO Tim Cook met with President Donald Trump, according to Forbes.
In a press release, Cook said the company’s new “$500 billion commitment” includes a doubling of its “Advanced Manufacturing Fund” from $5 billion to $10 billion and building a new “advanced manufacturing facility in Houston.”
The factory in Houston will be used to manufacture servers the company plans to deploy to support its artificial intelligence platform, Apple Intelligence.
The expanded Advanced Manufacturing Fund—which the company first announced in 2017 to support “high-skilled manufacturing jobs”—includes a “multibillion-dollar commitment” toward chipmaker TSMC’s new manufacturing facility in Arizona.
The investment will also cover the creation of an academy in Michigan to “train the next generation of U.S. manufacturers,” further research and development investments and “Apple TV+ productions in 20 states.”
In a bid to expand its AI offerings, the company said it will add to its data center capacity in North Carolina, Iowa, Oregon, Arizona, and Nevada.
Of the 20,000 people Apple plans to hire over the next few years, the company said a “vast majority” of them will be “focused on R&D, silicon engineering, software development, and AI and machine learning.”