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Nov. 5, 2018 / 8:44 PM GMT
By Dylan Byers
More than a year after Amazon announced that it was searching for a second headquarters, the company has decided to split the new offices between two cities, according to a person familiar with Amazon’s thinking who was not authorized to speak publicly.
The two-city plan, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, drastically shifts the expectations for what has become known as Amazon HQ2, which the company touted as bringing $5 billion in capital investments and 50,000 new jobs into a single market.
Amazon had said it would announce the location of its new headquarters before the end of 2018, leading to a wave of speculation about which city the company would pick. Amazon received applications from 238 cities, which it narrowed to a list of 20 finalists.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, recently said that the company looked at data to help make its decision “but then you make that decision with your heart.”
Amazon laid out a variety of requirements for the location of its new headquarters, including proximity to an international airport. Many cities offered sizable tax incentives in an effort to attract Amazon’s interest.