Siemens Invests $165 Million to Expand Manufacturing Across the Carolinas

Siemens announced Tuesday it will invest $165 million to expand its manufacturing footprint across the Carolinas, planting a significant share of that growth in eastern Wake County with new facilities in Wendell and Knightdale and an expansion of an existing campus on Siemens Road near N.C. Highway 97.

The German industrial manufacturer, which produces electrical equipment used to power data centers and AI operations, said the Wake County projects will create 350 jobs across Knightdale and Wendell by 2028.

The largest job-creation piece comes from expanding switchgear production at the existing Wendell campus, a 272,000-square-foot plant that once manufactured charging stations for electric buses, trucks and other large vehicles. That expansion is projected to bring more than 200 additional jobs by 2028. Siemens is also opening a new 101,000-square-foot facility in Wendell to produce protection and automation devices for electrical systems, a site expected to add 50 positions.

A new power devices facility in Knightdale rounds out the local investment, with Siemens targeting 100 positions there by the end of 2026. A separate account from CBS17 placed a 131,000-square-foot facility assembling integrated power delivery systems in Raleigh, describing the products as prefabricated units designed to help data center operators bring facilities online more quickly. The discrepancy between Raleigh and Knightdale as the location for that 100-job site has not been officially resolved, and Siemens has not provided a site-by-site breakdown of the $165 million investment.

The expansion reflects a broader scramble among industrial suppliers to keep pace with U.S. data center construction, itself driven by surging demand for AI computing capacity. Company leaders said the investment will boost production capacity while bringing hundreds of jobs to the central North Carolina region.

The announcement lands against a complicated local backdrop. Across Wake County in Apex, the town last week became the latest North Carolina municipality to impose a 12-month moratorium on new data center projects, a decision that followed a Maryland developer scrapping data center plans in the area amid community pushback. Siemens' expansion involves manufacturing infrastructure to supply those facilities rather than operating data centers itself, but the timing underscores how deeply the industry's growth is reshaping land use and economic planning across the county.