Raleigh’s Bandwidth leaves Wake County jobs deal as it seeks ‘flexibility’ beyond NC
North Carolina has ended its incentive agreement for the Raleigh communications software company Bandwidth to create more than 1,100 jobs at its newly-completed headquarters in the Triangle. The cancellation came on Tuesday after Bandwidth notified the N.C. Department of Commerce earlier this month it intended to exit the deal.
In a Jan. 11 letter, Bandwidth chief financial officer Daryl Raiford said the withdrawal will give the company “greater flexibility” over “workplace planning” both in North Carolina and beyond.
Bandwidth announced its 1,165-jobs Wake County project in April 2020. Seven months later, the company purchased the Belgium-based commercial cloud communication provider Voxbone for $519 million. In his commerce department letter, Raiford highlighted this acquisition, saying it presented “expanded growth opportunities for both our North Carolina-based employees along with Company employees operating in our other locations across the United States and worldwide.”
Founded in 1999, Bandwidth offers cloud-based software for voice, text messaging and emergency services communications. It counts Cisco, Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services as clients, and employs roughly 1,100 workers worldwide, including 750 locally. Last summer, the publicly traded company completed an expansive main campus in west Raleigh, which contains fitness facilities, walking trails, and a children’s school. Its final price tag topped $100 million.
This spending in Wake County exceeded what the company had committed to invest under the terms of its jobs grant. But Bandwidth says it has only added 87 area jobs since the project was announced, and it has not received any state dollars under the 2020 deal.
The majority of economic projects backed by state incentives never meet their initial jobs targets, a News & Observer analysis shows, with about one in five deals terminated before any public money gets disbursed. Bandwidth was eligible to receive $32.3 million over 12 years had it hit its original hiring goals.
Despite leaving its North Carolina agreement, Bandwidth asserts it still plans to expand its headcount here.
“We have maintained a stable and growing workforce in North Carolina, which we expect will continue to increase in 2024 and beyond,” Bandwidth spokesperson David Doolittle said in an email Tuesday. “However, as we evaluate our objectives, we believe our withdrawal from the Grant will give us greater flexibility to drive thoughtful workplace planning along with our North Carolina growth strategy.”
This story was originally published January 23, 2024 at 2:24 PM with the headline "Raleigh’s Bandwidth leaves Wake County jobs deal as it seeks ‘flexibility’ beyond NC."
