Amazon may spread its second headquarter in the US over two locations

Amazon's decision to have its second headquarters split across two locations will give it access to diverse talent and ease the pressure on infrastructure for housing, transportation etc when the new office comes up.

Global online retail giant Amazon may split its planned second headquarters in the US across two locations, and the final decision on the cities where it will set up its campus is expected soon, media reports said. When the company had initially decided to set up a second headquarters, it had taken the unorthodox route of inviting cities to compete through an open bidding.

The open bidding process attracted participation from over 230 cities and regions in the US where they laid out various tax incentive plans running into billions of dollars for the online retail giant.

The competing cities also undertook expensive marketing campaigns to 'win' the bidding. For example, Newark and New Jersey proposed $7 billion in incentives for Amazon.

Amazon finally narrowed down the likely location to Dallas, New York City and Crystal City in Northern Virginia, according to various news reports. The company had earlier committed to hire around 50,000 employees and invest more than $5 billion for its new campus over a period of 20 years.

As per the new plan, Amazon will now equally split the workforce between the two locations. Splitting the second headquarters will allow Amazon to tap into a diverse talent pool. It also help to ease the stress on infrastructure such as housing and transport in any one particular location. The company's current headquarter in Seattle employs around 45,000 people.

Also read: Amazon pumps in Rs 122 Cr into its Indian logistics arm

Amazon’s move to search for new headquarters has also to do with the search of fresh talent in a tightening labour market in the US. The competition to attract talent has been intense with other technology giants such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft looking for technical expertise in areas such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, cloud etc.

The retail giant has also been hiring aggressively across its other profit driving businesses like cloud computing and Alexa.