Apple plans to begin open a quarter-million-square-foot factory in Texas by 2026 to build artificial intelligence servers.
The iPhone maker will work with Foxconn to build the facility in Houston, where it will assemble servers that go into data centers that power its Apple Intelligence platform, reported Reuters. Those servers are currently made outside of the US.
Operations at the facility will add around 20,000 research and development jobs across the US. Apple plans to spend $500 billion (A$786.93 billion) in the US over the next four years.
While Apple has been under pressure by the new Trump administration to shift manufacturing away from China and also invest towards generating jobs in the US.
Trump, in a Truth Social post, thanked Apple and its CEO Tim Cook. Cook reportedly met President Donald Trump last week.
Apple confirmed last month that it had started mass producing chips of its own design at an Arizona factory owned Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
The company plans to double its Advanced Manufacturing Fund to $10 billion (A$15.74 billion), with part of the expansion being a “multibillion-dollar commitment from Apple to produce advanced silicon” at TSMC’s Arizona factory.
With the Apple iPhone 16e which was unveiled last week, Apple introduced its first in-house cellular modem, the C1. Apple called the new C1 modem its “most power-efficient modem ever in an iPhone.”
“Apple intends to eventually meld the modem component into the main processor,” said Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. By around 2028, Gurman suggests that the Apple would have integrated the modem into its main processor which will likely result in energy and cost benefits.
