Amazon adding 800 more jobs in Austin after NYC HQ2 fails
The company says the hiring is unrelated to HQ2.
Austin, Texas, is home to the Whole Foods headquarters.
Amazon faced a chilly reception in New York, but it appears Texas is more than happy to cozy up to the tech giant.
The world's biggest online store on Thursday said it's expanding its tech hub in Austin, Texas, and hiring 800 new tech workers there. Along with an existing Amazon tech hub, Amazon-owned Whole Foods' corporate headquarters is also located in Austin.
The announcement comes a little more than a month after the company scraped its much-ballyhooed plans to build a 25,000-employee campus in New York City following blistering criticism. Local activists and politicians complained about the company's lavish $3 billion incentives package, the potential strain on infrastructure and Amazon's alleged mistreatment of its workers.
In announcing the end of the New York project, Amazon said it planned to move forward with its other 25,000-employee campus in Virginia and a 5,000-employee site in Nashville, and also expand its 17 corporate offices and tech hubs around the US and Canada.
An Amazon representative told the Austin American-Statesman on Thursday that the local project wasn't related to the pullout from New York and was in process for several years.
Amazon won't receive any incentives from the state or local governments to open a new a 145,000-square-foot space in a mixed-use tower, the publication reported. The new office will open in 2020 and hiring will take place over several years, it said.
Amazon said its created 22,000 full-time jobs across Texas since 2011. Austin was one of the 20 finalists in Amazon's year-long search for a new headquarters, dubbed HQ2, that would become an equal to the original Seattle campus. The project was eventually split in two, with New York getting half and Virginia getting the other.