Apple is spending $1 billion to hire up to 15,000 new employees in Austin

Amazon isn’t the only company expanding its footprint on the U.S. Apple announced a series of expansions in the U.S., including the location of its massive second campus which is set to be Austin, Texas.

Apple announced earlier in the year that it would be launching a second major campus in the U.S., but at the time it didn’t announce the location of it. Now, not only do we know that it will be located in Austin, but we also know that the company will be spending $1 billion to get it up and running. Eventually, the Austin campus will be second in size only to the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. In fact, the new 133-acre campus is expected to make Apple the largest private employer in Austin and will accommodate 5,000 employees at first, with an ultimate total capacity of 15,000.

The new office will focus on a number of different facets of the company’s business, including “engineering, R&D, operations, finance, sales, and customer support.”

Austin isn’t the only place Apple us expanding to. The company has also announced smaller expansions in cities like San Diego, Seattle, and Culver City, California, which Apple will each have more than 1,000 employees in each city. Over the next three years, Apple also plans on expanding operations in New York, Boulder, Colorado, and Pittsburgh. These expansions could be huge for the cities in which they take place — though only if they can manage the quick growth well and not let it lead to a shortage in housing and resources.

Of course, many of the expansions Apple announced are simply additions to existing offices. Apple already has offices in Austin where it employs as many as 6,200 people. In total, Apple employs over 90,000 people in the U.S., with more than 1,000 employees in 16 states. At the beginning of 2018, the company committed to investing $350 billion in the U.S. economy, and the new announcement could go a long way in achieving that.

The growth could also help convince the government and customers that Apple is committed to operations in the U.S. The company has been criticized by some for the partnerships and operations it has in China.