Amazon officially announced New York City and Arlington, Va. will be the two locations for its HQ2.
A Nov. 13 blog post on Amazon’s website said it will invest $5 billion to create more than 50,000 jobs across the two new headquarters. The blog post noted that Amazon will also be creating a Center for Excellence for its Operations business that will be located in Nashville. That centre will create more than 5,000 jobs.
“We’re excited to build new headquarters in New York City and Northern Virginia,” Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos said in the blog post. “These two locations will allow us to attract world-class talent that will help us to continue investing for customers for years to come. The team did a great job selecting these sites, and we look forward to becoming an even bigger part of these communities.”
In its blog post, Amazon said it chose two locations because it can “recruit more top talent by being in two locations.”
It added that Amazon was looking for a location “with strong local and regional talent – particularly in software development and related fields – to continue hiring and innovating on behalf of our customers.”
The news was of no surprise to senior executives and CEOs of Canadian companies, who were in fact relieved after reading Wall Street Journal’s report last week that indicated Toronto was no longer in the running.
Executives said to ITWC that should politicians be paying more attention and getting excited about Canadian companies rather than towards an American company.
They also noted that it was time for Canada to build its own Amazon instead of bringing in an Amazon that would create a branch like so many other U.S. companies have.