1/ It's time to bring back "designed in California, made in California.”
Today, at @reindsummit, @ashleevance and I introduced Solano Foundry, the largest advanced manufacturing park in America, an hour north of Silicon Valley. Built by @CAForever with @JLL. 🧵
2/ Silicon Valley made its name in hardware. HP, Intel, Lockheed, and other pioneers didn’t split their R&D and factory floors. Engineers and tradesmen worked side by side. In 1965, Lockheed alone employed 28,000 people in Sunnyvale. 28,000 people!
3/ But we offshored to China, and broke that model. And now it’s Shenzhen and Guangzhou that lead drones and robotics. It’s time to invest back home. But R&D teams can’t waste days traveling from a design lab in SV to factories scattered everywhere. We need the American Shenzhen.
4/ We also can’t win by building factories off of random freeway exits in the middle of nowhere. The best people don’t want to work there. To actually re-industrialize, we need industrial ecosystems, where R&D, production, and training are located within amazing places to live.
5/ Solano Foundry can deliver on all of these. 2,100 acres, with capacity for up to 40 million square feet, built as part of a walkable city with 175,000+ new homes, located in the heart of Northern California, 40mins from Napa, 2.5 hours from Tahoe.
6/ Why Solano? An hour north of SV, startups can easily scale factories for drones, robotics, defense, ships, energy. Co-located with Travis Air Force Base and the proposed Solano Shipyard, so whatever we build can go from factory to sea to sky 🏭 ➡️🚢 ➡️🛫
7/ And if we need to go bigger? @CAForever owns over 100 square miles, and can scale capacity through separate projects if required. That’s 5x the size of Manhattan, 2x the size of San Francisco, and larger than Washington DC or Seattle.
8/ “But it’s California.” Yes. Which is where 95% of the AI software talent is located. You can’t run modern factories, or design the products being built there, without the AI talent in SV. Companies that colocate AI with manufacturing will win.
9/ We master-planned the Solano Foundry in close partnership with @JLL, @CREmatters, and their Advanced Manufacturing Group, the best in the business. Entitlements are now under way, through Suisun City’s Expansion Plan. Here’s @JLL’s whitepaper on Solano Foundry: californiaforever.com/wp-content/upl…
10/ Here’s the kicker. Solano Foundry will offer permitting as fast as 90 days. How? By completing the entitlements upfront, so that companies coming here can just go through a ministerial permit process.
11/ What are companies saying? Here are quotes from @JLL's whitepaper by @2112Power, CEO & CPO of @Hadrian, @lukasczinger, CEO of @Divergent3D , @BobSwan, former CEO of Intel, and @austinbishop, CEO of @newindustrials. For others, see here: californiaforever.com/solano-foundry/
12/ Silicon Valley earned its name because chips were once made here alongside code. By bringing R&D and manufacturing back together, Solano Foundry restores that magic, in a new home for frontier tech. California is back. Come build with us: foundry@californiaforever.com.
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