Apple is launching a $1 billion fund to invest in advanced manufacturing companies in the US, a strategy that will surely be welcomed by the Trump administration’s goal of creating new American jobs.
The California-based tech giant will announce its first investment later this month.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an interview with CNBC that the fund would help Apple be “the ripple in the pond, because if we can create many manufacturing jobs around, those manufacturing jobs create more jobs around them because you have a service industry that builds up around them.”
Cook didn’t go into detail about the first beneficiary of the fund, but stated that Apple has already “talked to a company that we’re going to invest in.”
Advanced manufacturing is the use of innovative technology to improve products or processes. Whilst overall manufacturing employment in the US has dropped over the past few decades, advanced manufacturing has created around one million jobs.
Rob Atkinson, an economist and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, was quoted by Wired as saying that “people who deny you can do anything with manufacturing jobs aren’t really looking at the evidence.”
“This is a long-term, future play,” Raymond told Wired. “If it’s an investment around advanced manufacturing, integrating technology into products and shop floors, it should be beneficial across the board.”
Cook also said that Apple will employ “thousands of employees, thousands more in the future” in the US, but didn’t provide details on when or how that will happen.
Apple says it is one of the biggest job creators in the United States, responsible for over two million jobs across all 50 states.
Of these 2 million jobs, Apple says that 1,530,000 are attributable to the App Store ecosystem, 450,000 are linked to its U.S.-based suppliers, and 80,000 work directly for the company.
