Google confirmed this week that it will expand its satellite office in Madison, WI, as part of a $13 billion investment in data centers and offices nationwide in 2019.
Xconomy reported Jan. 31 that the Bay Area tech giant intends to triple the size of its downtown Madison outpost by adding a second office, located across the street from its current digs. The 45,000 square feet of combined space will give Google (NASDAQ: [[ticker:GOOGL]]) enough room for an estimated 225 local employees, building developer Otto Gebhardt told Xconomy. At the time, Google declined to comment on the expansion.
On Wednesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed in a blog post that the company’s Madison workforce would move into a larger space in the next few months. The post didn’t provide more details. Xconomy has contacted Google’s press relations department for additional comment.
The Wisconsin expansion is part of a nationwide initiative that includes “major expansions in 14 states,” Pichai wrote. A map of the expansion projects shows that Google is planning new office developments in places such as New York, the Boston area, the Seattle area, the Bay Area, and Austin, TX.
The $13 billion worth of projects are expected to help create 10,000 construction jobs in Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Virginia. When the expansion is finished, Pichai said Google will have the capacity to hire “tens of thousands” of additional employees.
“With this new investment, Google will now have a home in 24 total states, including data centers in 13 communities,” Pichai wrote. “2019 marks the second year in a row we’ll be growing faster outside of the Bay Area than in it.”
Meanwhile, of course, the other big news of the week is that Seattle-based Amazon (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AMZN]]) is canceling its plans to build another headquarters in New York’s Long Island City neighborhood.
[Top image is a file photo of Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA. Photo courtesy of Google.]
