Amazon's Second HQ Search Caught Washington Governor `Off Guard'

(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc.’s announcement in September that it was looking for a second headquarters took Washington Governor Jay Inslee by surprise, but he said the state’s status as a tech hub isn’t at risk.

“We had not had any sort of prewarning about it,” Inslee said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “It did catch us a little off guard, I think with the rest of the world.” Inslee said the fact that the company is looking beyond its Seattle headquarters is a “signal of Amazon’s incredible success” that has helped build the region into a tech hub for a range of employers.

While Washington state has used tax incentives to attract and retain employers, Inslee said “intellectual talent” is the most important tool for recruiting tech companies, and that developing “the nucleus of an ecosystem” helps build critical mass of employers and workers. He pointed to the large engineering offices that Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook Inc. and other tech companies that have established in the Seattle region. 

Inslee said local tech leaders, including executives at Microsoft Corp. and Expedia Inc., provided key support to the state’s legal challenges to U.S. President Donald Trump’s travel ban. “They recognize having that open door to talent is important for their business growth,” Inslee said.

Protecting the regional environment, where locals ski in the Cascades and sail in Puget Sound, is important for attracting tech workers, Inslee said, and part of what led him to join with more than a dozen states vowing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in reaction to the U.S.’s planned withdrawal from the Paris climate accord. 

“This is a great place to recruit a 23-year-old computer scientist,” Inslee said.

Almost two dozen companies working on autonomous vehicles are operating in the state, Inslee said, and the state’s supporting the growth of clean energy companies, such as a leading manufacturer of carbon fiber for electric cars. “We are moving to a de-carbonized economy, and when we do that, there are enormous economic opportunities,” Inslee said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Karen Weise in Seattle at kweise@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz