North Carolina has approved Apple's request to push back the hiring and investment milestones tied to its long-delayed Research Triangle Park campus, effectively restarting the incentive agreement that could be worth up to $845 million to the company, the Herald reports.
North Carolina's Economic Investment Committee voted this week to grant Apple a four-year extension on the timelines originally established when the company secured a rare "transformative" Job Investment Grant in 2021. The move follows Apple's confirmation last year that it had paused construction plans and was seeking to renegotiate the agreement with the state.
Under the original deal, Apple committed to invest $1 billion in North Carolina over a ten-year period, including $552 million for a new corporate campus in Research Triangle Park and $448 million to expand its data center footprint in Catawba County in exchange for up to $845 million in tax benefits if it met strict annual hiring and spending goals.
Apple has still not begun construction on the campus. In June last year, the company formally asked the state to suspend the project for up to four years, noting it had added around 600 employees in the Raleigh area since 2021 but required more time before beginning major development work.
Site plans filed in 2023 showed that Apple expected to build three office buildings, several support structures, and a car park totaling around 900,000 square feet. The latest vote enables Apple to delay hiring requirements until the end of 2027, by which time it will need to add 126 positions to remain eligible for incentives, rising to 1,719 by year five and 2,700 by year ten.
Apple previously said the campus will focus on machine learning, artificial intelligence, software engineering, and other related fields.
