There is no denying that 2020 was an extremely difficult year for many area businesses and families. As we reflect on the past year and the many curveballs it threw us, we saw just how resilient the Austin-area economy has become.

Now that we’ve closed the books on 2020, these are some of the ways in which our region exceeded expectations.

In addition to the announcement of Tesla’s Giga Texas, for which the Austin Chamber was awarded Business Facilities‘ 2020 Deal of the Year Gold Award, we also saw relocations and expansions from the likes of Oracle, Amazon, and BAE Systems.

The 2020 business relocations and expansions in the region resulted in a record-breaking

22,114 jobs announced – real jobs for real people during a very challenging year.

The Austin region continues to be magnet for relocations. Although our Economic Development team was not able to conduct their marketing trips in person in 2020, they quickly pivoted to launch virtual outreach.

In addition to the headline-grabbing announcements like Tesla and Amazon, we also saw new projects from a variety of industries, like electric off-road vehicle manufacturer Volcon, online mortgage lender Tomo Networks, energy & geoscience innovation/R&D studio Shell Studio X, and COVID-19 focused viral testing lab Curative.

This diversity of industries ensures that our region continues to foster a robust and resilient economy for years to come.

From Oracle to Whole Foods to Realtor.com to PIMCO to Texas Children's Hospital, our team helps to keep businesses growing.

In 2020, expansion projects resulted in 9,693 new jobs announced for our region.

Our team supports regional expansion projects by connecting businesses with potential government incentive programs, creating pipelines for talent through connections with universities and organizations such as Workforce Solutions, assisting with real estate RFI's, connecting with CapMetro, and much more. We celebrate every win on our relocations and expansions log.

Through our global technology and innovation efforts, we also saw 138 venture capital deals resulting in $1.78 billion for local companies in 2020.