Despite vocal public opposition, developer Irfan Ali of Herndon-based company Balico says he’s still moving forward with seeking local government approval for a power plant and data center campus he wants to build on 2,233 acres in the Banister district of Pittsylvania County.
County residents turned out in large numbers for two public meetings about the project this week to voice their opposition, according to news reports. Concerns expressed included property values, burial grounds on the land and altering the area’s rural beauty.
Balico doesn’t have the necessary votes from members of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors to approve rezoning the land for the project, according to board Vice Chair Robert Tucker.
Even so, Ali told Virginia Business Friday that the project isn’t dead: “I just want folks to know that I’m not going away.”
The Pittsylvania County Planning Commission is set to consider rezoning approvals for the land selected for the Balico project Nov. 7. After members of the commission decide whether to recommend the project, its fate will be decided by the county supervisors at a future meeting.
The fact that the political will for the project is not there, Tucker said to Virginia Business Friday, “should have been enough to have [Ali] to withdraw his permitting application.”
The current proposal calls for building up to 84 data center buildings and a natural gas power plant in a rural area along Chalk Level Road. The project would generate about 700 jobs, said Ali, adding that he selected the site to tap into the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303-mile natural gas pipeline that runs to Chatham, to supply the project’s proposed 3,500-megawatt gas power plant.
While he has lived in Virginia for four decades, Ali is a native of Pakistan, which has been noted by some who oppose the project. “I understand these people are foreigners. Come [on] people smarten up,” one person posted to Facebook.
Ali has spent much of his career working with other companies to develop independent power generation projects “both here and overseas … both on the finance side as well as on the permitting and entitlement side,” he explained.
His first attempted project with Balico was a natural gas power plant planned for Charles City, but that failed due to regulatory issues.
While Ali plans to move forward with Thursday’s hearing, he said he is willing to consider proposing a smaller data center and power plant. “I may adjust the project size and scope, but beyond that, my intent is to continue developing a project in Pennsylvania County,” he said.
A smaller project would also be a no-go for Tucker, however. “Based on everything that we’ve experienced with this particular investor and the community reaction, I don’t think that I’m going to support that,” he said. “I can’t speak for the other supervisors, but I don’t think the support is there.”
On Wednesday, Supervisor Vic Ingram posted on his Facebook page that he would not support the Balico project. Ingram said Friday that he understands the proper procedure is to wait for the planning commission members to make their recommendation, and “I sort of jumped out of line, and I’ve apologized to some people for that,” Ingram said. “But I just wanted to save … some time and energy and trouble, headache {for the] business there by saying, ‘I’m not going to support this, and … I’m not backing down.’”
On Thursday, Nathan Harker, a member of the planning commission wrote on his Facebook page that the “reason for the the planning commission’s hearing as well as the [board of supervisors] hearing is to allow for both petitioners and citizens to make their case.” He added, “As a civilized society, we must hash these things out in the open, on the record.” Harker could not be reached for further comment Friday.
The proposed data center and power plant development could deliver a minimum of $120 million per year in tax revenue to Pittsylvania once it is built out, a process that could take between eight and nine years, according to Ali, who points out that Microsoft’s data center in Boydton has had a positive economic impact on Mecklenburg County.
“Economic development and progress happens,” he said. “You can’t just stop it entirely.”
In July. Pittsylvania County’s board of supervisors unanimously approved heavy industrial rezoning for Anchorstone Advisors SOVA ‘s plans to build a potential $1 billion-plus data center campus on a 946-acre tract in Ringgold.
The difference with that project, Ingram noted, is that it’s planned for a “more industrial” part of town near U.S. Route 58. “I support that,” he said “but putting one in the middle of a rural agricultural community, I’m just not in favor of that.”
Tucker said that the Anchorstone Advisors’ project is smaller, but that’s not the only difference. “The overall logistics,” he said, “are pretty much different.”
In late 2020, the Air Force made headlines when it announced that an artificial intelligence co-pilot, named ARTUµ, helped command and control a U.S. military spy plane for the first time in history.
If the name, pronounced R-2, sounds familiar, it is. Think R2-D2, or “Artoo,” Luke Skywalker’s lovable droid and X-Wing copilot from the “Star Wars” franchise. Except this was not a galaxy far away, but Beale Air Force Base in California.
ARTUµ controlled sensors and tactical navigation of a U-2 Dragon Lady on a reconnaissance training mission out of Beale on Dec. 15, 2020. It was charged with searching for enemy missile launchers while the plane’s human pilot, known only by the call sign “Vudu,” searched for enemy aircraft during a simulated missile strike.
The tech, developed by McLean-based Fortune 500 contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and Air Force researchers, modified an open-source gaming algorithm and ran more than 1 million training simulations in a lab — a “digital Dagobah,” Will Roper, who then served as the service’s assistant secretary for acquisition technology and logistics, wrote in an editorial for Popular Mechanics. ARTUµ was mission-ready in just over a month.
“Failing to realize AI’s full potential will mean ceding decision advantage to our adversaries,” Roper said at the time.
Fast-forward four years and AI’s technological advancements have continued, transforming lives and — controversially — livelihoods as it becomes more entrenched in the workplace. At the same time, the military has continued to cite how critical AI will remain in helping the U.S. outpace its adversaries. Even as the Pentagon faces ongoing tensions in the Middle East amid the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and in Europe with Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine, military leaders are refocusing for the potential of a wide-ranging battle with China in the Pacific that would most likely unfold across sea, air, land, space and cyberspace.
Virginia’s defense contractors are at the cusp of that work, with a hand in some of the largest and most transformative AI projects on behalf of the military. Those range from warfighting tools like unmanned vehicles to generative AI software to perform mundane business support tasks like military personnel record searches. That’s work that could be game changing for the military at a time when budgets and manpower are tight and harnessing data could be key to maintaining the upper hand against an adversary.
“We try to focus on mission meets innovation,” says Holly Levanto, who is overseeing delivery of AI and digital solutions for Booz Allen Hamilton’s defense clients. Photo by Shannon Ayres
“I think that the eye is on the prize … when it comes to [the Department of Defense] right now, from the perspective of this is something we have to do from a national security point of view based on threats that we see from other nation states,” says Jason Payne, chief technology officer for Arlington County-based Microsoft Federal, which currently has a contract worth as much as $21.9 billion to produce more than 100,000 AI-enhanced goggles for the Army. “We know that near-peer competitors are investing heavily in this technology.”
Crunching data
The Pentagon is also investing heavily in AI technology. Its fiscal 2025 budget request, which totals $850 billion and was released in March, includes $1.8 billion for AI spending as well as an additional $1.4 billion for the department’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control project, an ambitious departmentwide effort to connect “sensors to shooters to targets” globally.
But those dollar figures, the Pentagon admits, don’t likely tell the full story. With AI involved in so many programs, the Pentagon’s comptroller has acknowledged it’s difficult to provide a detailed breakdown of its AI investments. Even pinning down the exact number of AI defense projects is challenging. A 2022 Government Accountability Office report found that the DOD had at least 685 ongoing AI projects spanning the military service — a figure based on procurement and research and development dollars.
While those numbers may not offer a ton of clarity on the scope to which the Pentagon is looking toward AI, they do underscore the importance of it for the military, and Virginia contractors are benefiting from that desire.
Booz Allen Hamilton bills itself as the largest supplier of AI services to the federal government, with more than 300 active projects involving AI, according to Holly Levanto, a vice president overseeing the delivery of AI and digital solutions for Booz Allen’s U.S. defense clients.
“We try to focus on mission meets innovation,” Levanto says.
That work has included some of the Pentagon’s largest AI projects to date, including an $800 million, five-year task order awarded in 2020 to integrate and develop AI for the warfighter in the Alliant 2 Joint Warfighter Task Order, as well as a $885 million, five-year task order awarded in 2018 to help the DOD sift through its enormous amount of reconnaissance data — a project called Enterprise Machine Learning Analytics and Persistent Services, or eMAPS — through the deployment of AI and neural and deep neural networks. Booz Allen won a $1.5 billion recompete for the project in 2022.
Focusing on those mission areas has meant incorporating AI in ways to parse data faster. As an example, the Navy gathers vast amounts of data from its ships, Levanto says. Booz Allen has turned raw naval message traffic into tabular data that can be more easily and quickly analyzed to pinpoint trends.
“We can send AI models to the edge at the point of data collection,” says Levanto, a former naval surface warfare officer. “And so, we have some real-world scenarios where we’ve done that in points on the battlefield.”
Booz Allen also launched a venture capital fund in 2022 to sharpen its tech capabilities. It has now invested in 10 companies, eight of which are AI-focused, Levanto says. That included an investment in Wisconsin-based RAIC Labs, which developed a model- generating platform using unstructured data. In 2023, RAIC made headlines when its tech was used to track a Chinese intelligence balloon that traveled over the U.S. before being shot down by a military jet off the coast of South Carolina.
“Our ultimate goal is to get the Department of Defense to be able to utilize these leading commercial technologies … and so we need to help bridge that,” Levanto says.
Falls Church-based General Dynamics Information Technology, a subsidiary of Reston-based Fortune Global 500 aerospace and defense contractor General Dynamics, is also no stranger to big defense contracts involving AI, or those that involve wrangling large sets of data.
In March, GDIT received a $922 million contract to modernize enterprise IT infrastructure for U.S. Central Command, which directs and enables U.S. and allied military operations across the Middle East and a portion of Africa.
Data is the biggest barrier to AI, says GDIT’s Brandon Bean, the AI and machine learning leader for the company’s defense division. That includes data quality and integrity as well as accessing old, siloed IT architectures. Where it used to be that applications were built to create data as a byproduct, the paradigm has shifted. Now, data “is what the application is built to support,” Bean says. “The data comes first.”
At a September conference hosted by GDIT at Amazon’s HQ2 headquarters, John Hale, chief of cloud services for the Defense Information Systems Agency, discussed how DOD is working with contractors to update antiquated computer code with AI.
“We’re using AI capabilities to … modernize legacy code that all the people who ever wrote it are long gone,” Hale said. “And you know, it’s not perfect, but it gets us like 85 to 90% of the way there, and then we’re able to manually fill in that last 10 to 15% to bring these applications into the 21st century.”
For CENTCOM, GDIT is tasked with creating data analytical services to support decision-making across nearly 20 networks and building data centricity and literacy across the command. By leveraging AI, including incorporating data tagging, what has previously required a more tedious process of manual data sampling of mountains of records can be extrapolated much faster, giving commanders the potential to better evaluate what worked during missions, or develop trainings based on lessons learned. It could also help service members to prove justifications for injuries that may not have been recorded in their medical records, Bean says.
AI in the cockpit
While AI is helping the Defense Department wrangle large amounts of data for higher level decision-making, the Pentagon is also incorporating AI in weapons systems and for operational use by warfighters. And that tech is getting increasingly advanced.
In May, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, who has advocated for the military’s use of AI, rode in an F-16 Fighting Falcon that was controlled by AI in a dogfight exercise against another F-16 flown by a human. Relying on sensors, California-based Shield AI developed the program used by the Air Force during the flight. In March, Arlington County-based Boeing announced a collaboration with Shield AI to develop autonomous and AI technologies for defense programs. Boeing declined to comment for this story.
With AI in the cockpit, the technology shows no signs of slowing down, including in a variety of unmanned vehicles, which will be a key component in future battles, with several drone initiatives underway by the Pentagon and military branches.
At Newport News-based Huntington Ingalls Industries, Virginia’s largest industrial employer and the nation’s only builder of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, computer vision and recognition technologies have improved to the point where autonomous undersea vehicles like the company’s REMUS platform can be used to hunt for targets, gather intelligence and respond to findings without having to report back to the surface, says Andrew Howard, senior director of unmanned surface vehicles and autonomy programs within HII’s Mission Technologies division.
“Based on … customer comfort with things, different use cases, they could either update its survey pattern based on that information, or they could use that as the cue to pass information back to a surface operator to … take action based on that,” Howard says. “So, it’s really kind of made the information a bit more actionable than it used to be.”
The Navy in December 2023 announced that it had successfully launched and recovered a REMUS “Yellow Moray” drone via torpedo tubes on the USS Delaware, a Virginia-class attack submarine commissioned in 2022 and built by HII in partnership with General Dynamics’ Connecticut-based Electric Boat subsidiary. The Navy has said it could field the program for its submarine fleet later this year.
Meanwhile, the Marine Corps has been testing similar surface-level technology for its Long-Range Unmanned Surface Vessel (LRUSV) program using technology developed by HII that uses cameras and machine learning to identify and classify targets for maritime domain awareness, Howard adds. The drone’s tech passes intelligence to an operations center for action. Based on that feedback, the drone can then update its mission and shadow an intended target if called upon to act.
Gathering intelligence with less risk to warfighters can help save lives. Making that information more readily available can make work easier, too.
Reston-based Fortune 1000 contractor CACI International offers the DarkBlue Intelligence Suite, a tool that incorporates various AI techniques, including computer vision and image processing, to help analysts in dark web investigations and tracking. The company received a $239 million six-year task order in August to provide intelligence analysis and operations, including the DarkBlue suite, to the Army’s Europe and Africa command.
AI is also helping the Marines step into the metaverse. In October 2023, Fairfax’s CGI Federal, the U.S.-based arm of the Canadian professional services and consultancy, announced that it successfully completed a $34 million pilot to digitally twin the Florida-based Marine Corps Platform Integration Center’s assets into a virtual world by tagging its inventory and helping the service track its assets in real time. Being able to keep up with equipment like tanks as they travel the world could be of huge importance in a distributed battle across the Pacific, where troops could set up on airfields constructed on austere island chains. It could also help the service track maintenance needs and predict trends across vehicle fleets, says CGI Vice President Stephanie Ackman, who leads the company’s technology practice for defense, space and intelligence clients.
“When the rubber meets the road … [does a taxpayer] care about where the stuff is?” Ackman asks. “Yes, but they care more so about the safety of the individuals that are down range.”
Two South Boston-based economic development organizations will host a summit for entrepreneurs and business leaders Oct. 19 at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in Danville.
Launched by the SOVA Innovation Hub, a nonprofit working to drive economic transformation with digital skills and entrepreneurship, and RISE Collaborative, a regional initiative driven by a mission to build “a more inclusive and vibrant regional economy,” the inaugural Regional Innovation Summit for Entrepreneurs (RISE) Summit will offer skill-building workshops, speakers and networking.
“The biggest benefit of an event like this is really showing up and meeting your peers and finding out that the challenges of entrepreneurship that can be so lonely are really quite common, and there are so many resources available, not just locally but regionally and across the state,” says Lauren Mathena, director of economic development and community engagement for Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities, who helps with managing both the SOVA Innovation Hub and RISE Collaborative.
The roots of SOVA Innovation Hub date back to 2017 and the launch of Microsoft TechSpark, a program developed to provide greater economic opportunities and job creation in rural and small metropolitan communities. Organizers tapped Southern Virginia as one of seven communities across the country to receive help with needs such as job training, using technology to expand businesses, promoting computer science in schools, and expanding broadband.
Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities, a nonprofit middle-mile broadband provider based in South Boston, and Microsoft TechSpark went on to launch the SOVA Innovation Hub, which opened in downtown South Boston in 2021. The building provides space for coworking, training and includes a Microsoft Experience Center where individuals can try out digital equipment like the HoloLens, a mixed-reality device.
In 2021, leaders at the SOVA Innovation Hub and Longwood University worked together to establish the RISE Collaborative to provide training and networking to grow entrepreneurship and innovation in the counties of Halifax, Charlotte, Mecklenburg, Lunenburg, Brunswick, Buckingham, Prince Edward, Cumberland, Amelia, Nottoway, Patrick, Henry, Pittsylvania and the cities of Martinsville and Danville.
“It’s kind of always been part of the vision to host a large gathering, to bring people together in person,” said Mathena. Since both organizations formed during the pandemic, that goal got put on ice for a bit, but “now is the time,” Mathena added.
Among the speakers at the RISE Summit, Natalie Hodge Davis, founder and CEO of Rudy’s Girl Media, a multimedia company based in Martinsville, will offer tips for finding small business funding. Jenn Kinne of Farmville’s Letterpress Communications, a provider of boutique marketing strategies specializing in serving rural clients, will talk about topics like how to make the most of budgets for social media advertising. Michael Scales, a business analyst for the Longwood Small Business Development Center, will talk about essential financial skills for entrepreneurs. Robin Allen, president of Birdie’s Pimento Cheese, which is based in South Hill, will speak on product development, scaling and expanding into new markets.
“They have multistate distribution,” Mathena said of Birdie’s, “And so trying to encourage more folks to really think bigger and dream bigger in terms of how they can go, for example, from our farmers market to widespread distribution is part of what RISE Collaborative is all about.”
The RISE Female Founders Fund for Woman-Owned Businesses, which provides microgrant funding to female entrepreneurs in 15 localities in Southern Virginia, will award a $1,000 grant at the summit. Applications to be considered for funding are due Oct. 11.
Tickets to the summit, which can be found at sovarise.com, are $50 through Sept. 30 and then increase to $65. A limited number of student tickets and scholarships are available.
This story has been updated to correct an error about the SOVA Innovation Hub building.
Although there’s a great sense of responsibility helping the federal government fulfill its mission, Candice Ling has also found government contracting work to be an incredible privilege. Serving as a trusted partner to federal agencies is something that must be earned, she says, and so it’s especially satisfying when she can work together with a team to solve a problem. “We’ve got to be willing to immerse ourselves into the situation and roll up our sleeves,” Ling says.
That’s something Ling has mastered in her nearly six years with Microsoft. She currently leads the company’s federal division after stints as the software giant’s chief operating officer for U.S. regulated industries and its government industry leader in Asia. “You have to learn the challenges and barriers and opportunities where they can adopt technology.”
Ling likewise enjoys the challenge of a new recipe or a rigorous hike in a national park with her family. As a leader, Ling says, she does her best to foster a culture of innovation and collaboration while encouraging a combination of grit and grace — grit to make her team resilient, while extending grace so people (herself included) can learn from their mistakes.
She brings that spirit of openness to learning to her involvement in employee resource groups and mentorship. Ling believes it’s equally important to share stories of career successes and mistakes — and these conversations often focus on how to best make an impact. “I get mentored by my mentees, as well.”
Reston-based Agile Defense, an IT solutions provider for national security customers and the U.S. Department of Defense, has named Rick Wagner as its new top executive.
Agile announced the leadership change in a news release Tuesday. Wagner replaces CEO Jay Lee, who served in the role from 2010 to 2023. He will transition to a strategic advisory role supporting corporate growth and mergers and acquisitions, while continuing to serve on the company’s board. Agile Defense is backed by Enlightenment Capital, an aerospace, defense, government and technology investment firm, which acquired the company in November 2022.
“Agile Defense has built an amazing team dedicated to helping customers integrate technologies by delivering end-to-end IT services and solutions,” Wagner said in a statement. “I am excited to join the Agile Defense team and look forward to leveraging my experience as we enter the next stage in our partnership with Enlightenment.”
Founded in 1998, Agile Defense provides IT and cloud migration services; development, security and operations (DevSecOps); and cybersecurity assessment and risk management to the military and other federal customers. The company in May announced it acquired Falls Church-based XOR Security, a provider of cybersecurity operations and engineering and virtual security operations, boosting its personnel to more than 1,000 employees. Agile Defense announced in late September that it had won a contract to help the Army Project Manager Mission Command deliver technology to the battlefield through the management of mission critical networks in support of the service’s Program Executive Office Command Control Communication-Tactical (PEO-C3T). The office develops, acquires, fields and supports the Army’s tactical communications networks.
“We are delighted to bring Rick on board,” Jason Rigoli, Agile Defense chairman and Enlightenment Capital partner, said in a statement. “Agile has grown significantly, and Rick is uniquely qualified to help the company expand its capabilities and provide differentiated offerings for both existing and new customers.”
Ling took over leadership of Microsoft’s federal arm in July after Rick Wagner, the sector’s president since 2020, stepped down to pursue new opportunities.
Ling previously served as civilian federal sector vice president for Microsoft, a position she held since October 2021, and she also spent 19 years with Canadian consulting firm CGI, most recently as a senior vice president in Fairfax. She joined Microsoft as a government industry leader in Asia in 2018.
Microsoft’s federal team works for the U.S. government’s civilian and defense sectors and shares the Pentagon’s $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability Contract to build out cloud capabilities for the Department of Defense with Amazon, Google and Oracle. Microsoft had previously won a $10 billion precursor to that contract, known as Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, but in 2021, the Pentagon said it was not moving forward because that contract had been developed when the department’s cloud needs were not yet mature, according to The New York Times.
Ling received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Western Michigan University and an MBA from the University of Texas.
Microsoft Corp.’s federal arm has new leadership, after its former president, Rick Wagner, left the company to pursue “new opportunities.”
Wagner had run Microsoft Federal, now based in Rosslyn, since 2020. Candice Ling announced in a LinkedIn post this week that she had accepted his former job. Microsoft’s federal team works with the civilian and defense sectors on a variety of projects, and is part of the team on the Pentagon’s $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability Contract to build out cloud capabilities for the Department of Defense.
“Rick Wagner, president, Microsoft Federal, has decided to leave the company to pursue new opportunities,” a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Virginia Business in an email Wednesday, adding that his departure was announced last week. “We are deeply grateful for his leadership and contributions to the company and wish him all the best in the future.”
Ling served as the federal sector’s civilian vice president since October 2021 and previously spent 19 years with Canadian consulting firm CGI Inc., most recently as a senior vice president in Fairfax. She joined Microsoft as a government industry leader in Asia in 2018.
Ling wrote in her LinkedIn post that she wants “to champion a public-private centered strategy, fostering co-innovation and accelerating time-to-mission. We are also dedicated to and laser-focused on accelerating AI adoption in support of your mission.” She went on to say she is “committed to fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation and inclusivity while supporting each and every one of you to achieve your goals.”
Breaking Defense, a defense industry trade publication, reported that Wagner’s departure marks the third senior-level Microsoft executive with ties to the industry to leave in the last year. Toni Townes-Whitley, who stepped down as Microsoft’s president of U.S. regulated industries in September 2022, will become the new CEO of Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) in October, succeeding Nazzic S. Keene.
In her LinkedIn post, Ling also announced that Heidi Kobylski will take over her previous role. Kobylski has spent more than 13 years at Microsoft, including as general manager of the federal civilian unit.
Microsoft Corp. will open a sales headquarters in Arlington, expanding its presence in Northern Virginia, the tech giant’s president of U.S. regulated industries, Toni Townes-Whitley, announced Tuesday.
Microsoft — which announced in May 2020 that it would invest $64 million to expand in Reston Town Center in western Fairfax County, creating 1,500 jobs — will operate out of the Commonwealth Tower, located at 1300 Wilson Blvd. in Arlington, Townes-Whitley said in a statement.
The office space, which will undergo construction with plans to open in mid-2022, will be home to Microsoft’s U.S. regulated industries team, including Microsoft Federal.
According to commercial real estate firm Tishman Speyer, the 15-story Commonwealth Tower is 359,840 square feet. Townes-Whitley did not disclose the amount of square feet that Microsoft had leased and did not disclose the number of employees who would work there. However, a rendering posted by Townes-Whitley on LinkedIn appears to show Microsoft’s logo at the top of the building.
“From the facility to the location itself, everything about this project was planned with our customers in mind, creating a proximity that enables us to support their evolving needs,” Townes-Whitley said in a statement. “Additionally, this move unites our teams in the mid-Atlantic region, fostering a communal atmosphere that can inspire us to do our absolute best work.”
Microsoft established its first Virginia facility at Reston Town Center in 2002, the Innovation & Technology Conference Center. Since then, the company has built a corporate presence in Richmond and a data center in Mecklenburg County.
Microsoft Corp. will invest $64 million to expand its presence in Reston Town Center in western Fairfax County, creating 1,500 jobs, Gov. Ralph Northam announced Wednesday.
The software giant will occupy 400,000 square feet in the Reston Town Center, which will include a software development and research hub, as well as retail space. The project is expected to be ready for employees in summer 2021. Microsoft established its first Virginia facility at Reston Town Center in 2002, the Innovation & Technology Conference Center. Since then, the company has built a corporate presence in Richmond and a data center in Mecklenburg County.
“One of Microsoft’s core principles is actively listening to our customers, so we can build and improve our technology based on their feedback. Being close to our customer base is extremely important to our ongoing collaborations,” Terrell Cox, general manager at Microsoft, said in a statement. “We’ve had a presence in Reston for many years now, and this expansion will allow Microsoft to deliver even more solutions from a region known for its innovation and passion for technology.”
Microsoft also has partnered with Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corp. in building the SOVA Innovation Hub in South Boston, expected to be finished in the fall. The company plans to move its TechSpark Virginia job-creation initiative to the building.
“Virginia, like the rest of the nation, is facing unprecedented job loss due to COVID-19, so this announcement couldn’t come at a better time,” Northam said in a statement. “Virginia is a leader in the information technology industry, and Microsoft’s continued investment here is a testament to our top-ranked business climate, infrastructure, and world-class workforce.”
“Microsoft is a valued corporate partner, and we are excited to see the company expanding its footprint at its new software and R&D regional hub in Fairfax County,” Secretary of Commerce and Trade Brian Ball said in a statement. “The demand for cloud services is steadily increasing, and Microsoft’s newest operation will serve its growing customer base while developing cutting-edge software and creating 21st-century tech jobs.”
The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority and the General Assembly’s Major Employment and Investment (MEI) Project Approval Commission to secure the investment for Fairfax County. Microsoft will be eligible for a $22.5 million grant to fund partnerships with local colleges and universities for tech talent pipeline development.
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