Google on Tuesday announced it’ll be investing more than $300 million in Virginia in 2022.
The tech giant and Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced the move at Google’s office in Reston, where they also unveiled a grant from Google to CodeVA, a nonprofit that works to expand access to computer education for students across the commonwealth.
Google has more than 480 full-time workers in Virginia, and the company said it’d be investing in more data centers in Northern Virginia. And, as Google vice president Vint Cerf said, the conversation would grow to include possible locations in the rest of the state.
The money is part of $9.5 billion the company is spending nationwide on offices and data centers this year. They said they’ll be creating at least 12,000 new full-time jobs nationwide; they didn’t provide any Virginia-specific jobs numbers.
CodeVA will get $250,000. Google said that will expand Virginia’s Computer Science Hub Network — which supports computer science education resources for students, educators and families — and help develop a group of Computer Science Lab Schools.
Google will also team with the 23 Virginia community colleges and five Higher Learning Centers to offer Google Career Certificates.
“This is an exciting day,” Youngkin said. “This is why I love being governor.”
He said the Google money was “like a stone in the water” that would result in more than $9 billion in economic activity in the commonwealth. But he was even more excited about the money for CodeVA, calling it “an investment, but also a statement about education.”
“We have to prepare this work force for the future,” Youngkin said. “The opportunities are growing faster than we can believe.”
Youngkin repeated his call for the General Assembly to pass “the education budget that I think both parties can agree on,” which would be the largest in Virginia history and which, he predicted, would literally double down on K-12 computer education.
The governor also made a push for lab schools, which could be supported by groups such as CodeVA and companies such as Google.