Apple said it plans to invest $500 billion (£395bn) in the US in the next four years, including hiring 20,000 new staff and producing AI servers in the country, as it seeks to avoid new tariffs on goods imported from China.

The investment includes work on a new server factory in Houston, Texas, an academy for suppliers in Michigan and spending with existing suppliers in the US.

The announcement comes days after Apple chief executive Tim Cook met with US president Donald Trump in the White House last week.

China tariffs

Trump has threatened an additional 10 percent tariff on imports from China, where Apple produces most of its iPhones and other electronics.

But the company won tariff exemptions in Trump’s first term after arguing they would benefit foreign competitors such as Samsung Electronics.

Apple said in 2021 it would invest $430bn in the US over a half-decade period.

Cook said the spending was a “commitment to our country’s future”.

“We’ll keep working with people and companies across this country to help write an extraordinary new chapter in the history of American innovation,” he said.

Cook met with Trump in Florida after his November election win and attended Trump’s inauguration, along with other tech leaders.

The company said it would work with Taiwan’s Foxconn to begin producing servers for cloud-based artificial intelligence services, a service called Private Cloud Compute, at an existing plant in Houston.

Some of that manufacturing will be relocated from overseas.

It plans to open a new 250,000-square-foot Houston plant to manufacture the servers.

Data centre expansion

The company said it would expand data centre capacity in Arizona, Oregon, Iowa, Nevada and North Carolina.

In January Apple began production of custom chips at a TSMC plant in Arizona. Reports said the chips were for some Apple Watches and iPads.

The company said it would hire about 20,000 people, mostly focused on research and development, silicon engineering, software development and AI, in an “expanded” commitment.

The company also plans to expand its manufacturing fund from $5bn to $10bn, including a “multibillion-dollar commitment” to produce chips at TSMC’s Arizona plant.

Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, said the $500bn figure is likely to include all of Apple’s spending in the US, including general and administrative costs.

He said it was “unclear” whether the figure represented an acceleration in planned spending.