Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. is planning to invest $22 million into the Chippewa Falls facility formerly run by supercomputing company Cray Inc. to turn it into high-performance computing center of excellence and create more jobs in the process.
The computer technology company will receive $8 million in Enterprise Zone tax credits over the next five years under an incentive package announced Tuesday by Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.
“This is an important first step toward establishing Chippewa Falls as HPE’s Global Center of Excellence and it reaffirms the great relationship our state has had with HPE and Cray over the many years they’ve been in Chippewa Falls,” said Gov. Evers in a press release. “It sets us on a course toward even greater growth, bringing more family supporting jobs, expanding opportunities, and bolstering economic activity not only in the Chippewa Valley area, but across our state.”
HPE Inc., which recently decided to move its headquarters from San Jose, California to the Houston area, acquired Chippewa Falls-based supercomputing company Cray Inc. in 2019 in a deal valued at $1.4 billion.
Under the incentive plan submitted to the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance for review, the Chippewa Falls location would be designated as an Enterprise Zone (EZ) eligible for up to $8 million in performance-based tax credits over the next five years. HPE will be expected to retain its current workforce of 486 employees and create another 30 jobs with the multimillion-dollar investment in improvements.
HPE, as a result of its 2019 acquisition of Chippewa Falls-based Cray Inc., also has about 200 contingent employees at multiple sites in Chippewa Falls. All told, the average wage for full-time workers in the area is $78,000, well above the community's median income of $46,900, Evers and WEDC said.
The move builds upon Chippewa Falls' history in the development of supercomputers and high-performance computing technology as the former home of Cray and a production facility for Silicon Graphics Inc.
The Center of Excellence for HPC Manufacturing is the culmination of fully integrating HPE, SGI and Cray Inc. There are now four large computer systems for the U.S. government being manufactured in Chippewa Falls, including the world’s fastest exascale-class supercomputer El Capitan for the U.S. Department of Energy, according to Evers and WEDC.
HPE (NYSE: HPE), a spinoff of Hewlett-Packard, reported $26.9 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2020, down from $29.1 billion last year.
