Apple plans to move 121 jobs from San Diego to Texas – San Diego Union-Tribune

Apple has issued an ultimatum of sorts to part of its San Diego workforce. The tech giant told 121 people working on Siri and artificial intelligence features it is closing their San Diego office and relocating the jobs to Austin, Texas.

Bloomberg News reported that Apple on Wednesday notified San Diego employees of the planned relocation. Bloomberg cited people who asked not to be identified because the plans haven’t been formally announced. Apple confirmed in an email it is moving the jobs, but provided no other details.

Employees who opt not to relocate or apply to another San Diego-based role at Apple will reportedly be laid off. The team has until the end of February to decide; employees who do not relocate will be terminated on April 26.

Apple declined to confirm exactly which San Diego office location is closing. According to the Bloomberg report, the relocation surprised the local AI team. Bloomberg reported the staff was recently told it would relocate to another nearby Apple campus within the city by the end of January and packing boxes were distributed.

The AI-centered team is responsible for analyzing questions posed to the iPhone voice assistant, Siri, and determining how well it handled the response. The San Diego team was reportedly focused on Siri use in Hebrew, English, multiple dialects of Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and French.

“We’re bringing our Data Operations Annotations teams in the U.S. together at our campus in Austin, where a majority of the team is already based,” an Apple spokesperson said in an email to the Union-Tribune. “Everyone currently employed will have the opportunity to continue their role with Apple in Austin. We are deeply committed to San Diego where we have grown significantly, and are continuing to hire as we expand our world-class engineering teams.”

Apple to expand San Diego engineering hub, boosting workforce to 5,000 over five yearsApple previously announced a goal of hiring 5,000 people in the San Diego region by 2026. The tech company’s main expansion plans are aimed at hardware and software engineering roles.

The company currently has more than 480 job openings in San Diego, a majority in engineering. The Bloomberg source said some of the San Diego workers who are impacted by the relocation and are unwilling to leave San Diego “don’t think they’ll be eligible for many roles because they don’t have engineering backgrounds.”

Apple said it has hired approximately 2,000 people locally over the past two years, but declined to share how many employees it currently has in the San Diego area. Companywide, Apple employed about 161,000 full-time workers at the end of September.

To support its aggressive workforce expansion in recent years, Apple has been gobbling up more office space mainly in Rancho Bernardo and University City. While Apple has operated retail stores in San Diego for years, it began establishing an engineering operation locally in 2018 when it unveiled plans to open a 1,200-person hub for wireless technologies.

Apple expands San Diego footprint with purchase of 67-acre campus for $445MApple owns the former 838,308-square-foot Hewlett Packard inkjet research lab facility in Rancho Bernardo. It bought the seven-building Rancho Vista Corporate Center in Rancho Bernardo for $445 million in 2022. Intel is a tenant in that building, renting 44,696 square feet, according to data from real estate tracker CoStar.

The Cupertino-based company rents more than 800,000 square feet of office space across eight leases in San Diego County. In most cases, Apple is the largest tenant in these buildings, according to CoStar.

Originally Published: January 15, 2024 at 7:17 PM PST