Foxconn is ramping up its investment in Houston with two leases for industrial buildings being developed by Transwestern, on the heels of buying a portfolio comprising more than 1 million square feet from Dalfen Industrial.
The Taiwanese electronics giant, which includes Apple and Nvidia among its clients, leased 601,680 square feet at 8118 Houston Ave. and 8228 Houston Ave. for $56.6 million, according to a filing last week with the London Stock Exchange.
The two buildings are being developed by Transwestern at what the company is calling the Innerbelt Northwest Logistics Park. The Foxconn lease comes after Dalfen Industrial announced it sold four buildings at the Fairbanks Logistics Center to Foxconn for $142.1 million in early May. Fairbanks Logistics Center is less than a mile away from Transwestern's Innerbelt Northwest Logistics Park.
Both deals give Foxconn nearly 1.63 million square feet in northwest Houston to expand its artificial intelligence server production lines in the U.S., according to the Greater Houston Partnership, the city's largest chamber of commerce. The move comes as more companies are looking to establish domestic supply chains amid potential tariffs and market uncertainty.
The Greater Houston Partnership estimated in a report at the end of April that Foxconn's Houston plans included at least $450 million in capital investment that would create at least 600 direct jobs. The Greater Houston Partnership has been cultivating a relationship with Foxconn over the past several years. This includes an in-person visit with the company in Taiwan during last year’s economic development mission with Gov. Greg Abbott, according to the partnership.
The two-building lease with Transwestern represents one of the largest in the Houston area so far this year, according to CoStar data. Foxconn and Transwestern did not immediately return email requests from CoStar News for comment.
Meanwhile, Foxconn's purchase at Fairbanks Logistics Center includes space the electronics maker initially planned for the lease, Sean Dalfen, Dalfen Industrial's CEO, said in an interview with CoStar News.
"They leased one of the facilities ... and they came to us very shortly thereafter and said we would like to buy the whole park," Dalfen said. Originally developed by locally based Investment & Development Ventures, Dalfen Industrial acquired Fairbanks Logistics Center in 2023.
Houston has "unique demand drivers," according to a CoStar market report. The city has added over half a million new residents over the past three years, one of the largest gains in the country, while container traffic at Port Houston hit a record in 2024, the report states.
But the sale to Foxconn highlights a wider trend, said Dalfen. "Certain companies today are looking to make significant investments in facilities within the U.S. from an onshoring standpoint," he said.
Foxconn clients such as Apple and Nvidia are making similar moves around Houston. Nvidia announced plans in April to spend $500 billion over the next four years building what it calls AI supercomputers entirely in the United States. Those plans included a plant with Foxconn in Houston where mass production was expected to ramp up in the next 12 to 15 months.
In February, Apple announced a $500 billion investment in facilities throughout the U.S., including a new 250,000-square-foot advanced manufacturing facility in Houston to produce AI servers.
And it seems development firms like Dallas-based Dalfen Industrial and Houston-based Transwestern are capitalizing on all those AI growth plans.
"Houston is one of the locations that we've tagged as a great growth market that has solid fundamentals and that continues to perform very well," said Dalfen. "We're expanding substantially," with over $2 billion in the company's total development pipeline, Dalfen said.
For the record
Dalfen Industrial was represented in the Fairbanks Logistics Center sale by Stream Realty’s Garret Geaccone, Jeremy Lumbreras and Tyler Maner. Reggie Beavan and Joshua Brown of Newmark represented Foxconn.