Jabil picks North Carolina for new $500 million AI facility

Jabil Inc. will open a new facility in Rowan County, North Carolina, next year to support its cloud and artificial data center customers.

The St. Petersburg technology company will invest $500 million into the project over several years and create 1,181 jobs within five years. The news was announced Monday by North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein and RowanEDC.

Rowan County is in North Carolina’s Piedmont region between Charlotte and Winston-Salem.

The facility will be at 2121 Helig Road in a 400,000-square-foot space previously occupied by Gilden Yarns and is expected to be operational by the middle part of next year. 

Jabil, a multinational manufacturing, design and supply chain solutions company that makes parts for major companies, announced in June that it was investing the $500 million into its artificial intelligence and cloud data center infrastructure with a new facility.

At the time, a company executive said in a statement that “it is crucial to build the hardware that powers AI domestically.”

(A Jabil spokesperson confirmed the new facility, its fourth in the state, Tuesday morning.)

While there aren’t many details available about what exactly will be done at the facility when it opens, Stein says it will attract skilled manufacturing and engineering professionals and have a “potential annual payroll impact of more than $73.2 million for the region.”

The governor’s office says Jabil’s move to Rowan is being made, in part, because of a jobs grant approved Monday by the Tar Heel state's Economic Investment Committee.

The Job Development Investment Grant, according to the statement, calculates the project will grow North Carolina’s economy by $3.2 billion over the 12-year life of the grant and that Jabil will potentially be reimbursed up to $11.2 million over the term.

The agreement also calls for moving $1.25 million to a state utility fund that helps rural communities finance infrastructure upgrades to attract businesses.

“The project’s projected return on investment of public dollars is 115%, meaning for every dollar of potential cost to the state, the state receives $2.15 in state revenue,” the governor’s office says in the statement.

“JDIG projects result in positive net tax revenue to the state treasury, even after taking into consideration the grant’s reimbursement payments to a given company.”

Jabil’s revenue for the third quarter this year was up 15.7% to $7.8 billion when compared with the same period last year.