Flex, a diversified manufacturing partner with a growing focus on AI infrastructure, cloud computing and power solutions, has announced a US $1 billion investment in Mexico.

The investment — to be spread out over the next two years — seeks to boost the Austin, Texas-based company’s advanced manufacturing capacity in Mexico and will focus on creating equipment for data centers and artificial intelligence.

With eight plants and 40,000 employees already in Mexico, Flex provides design, engineering, manufacturing and supply chain services, while operating as a key hub for advanced manufacturing.

Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard and Flex’s senior director of business development and governmental relations Guillermo del Río elaborated on the new investment during President Claudia Sheinbaum’s Thursday morning press conference.

Ebrard said the investment is linked to the development of infrastructure for data centers and artificial intelligence, while Del Río confirmed that Flex already manufactures all the equipment needed to operate data centers at its plant in Guadalajara.

“The goal is to manufacture, assemble and test this equipment — this high-tech manufacturing — in Mexico,” Ebrard said, adding that only six countries in the world are capable of doing this.

The new funds — Flex’s largest investment in Mexico since it began operating here 40 years ago — will create 5,000 new jobs and will also serve to grow the company’s supply chain in Mexico, Del Río said.

“The metals we use … are already made in Mexico, the plastics are made here, too,” Del Río said, “[but] we’re still very dependent on external sources for electronics.”

Del Río said the investment is a response to the growth in telecommunications and the demand for technological infrastructure, explaining that production, which requires high energy consumption for equipment testing, will be concentrated in Guadalajara.

“To give you a sense of scale, we’re going to consume seven times the energy consumed by the port of Manzanillo,” he said. “That’s the energy required for testing this highly complex equipment.”

Flex — which also designs sophisticated products in Mexico such as hospital beds that can detect osteoporosis with a high degree of accuracy simply from the patient lying in the bed — has invested US $2.3 billion in Mexico over the past 10 years.

With reports from Reforma, El Universal and Quadratín México