Intel to expand presence in Poland at its largest EU research and development centre

US technology giant Intel has announced an investment worth tens of millions of euro to expand its presence in the Polish city of Gdańsk.

The site, which already employs more than 3,000 people and is the company’s largest research and development centre in the European Union, will now expand its role in developing artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomous vehicles for Intel, the world’s biggest chipmaker by revenue.

The development comes as Poland has sought in recent years to position itself as a regional technology hub, with Amazon and Uber opening R&D centres in the country and Microsoft and Google planning similar investments.

Last week, Intel announced that it will add a sixth building to its existing campus in Gdańsk, a city on Poland’s northern Baltic coast which also hosts offices of firms such as Nordea bank, PWC and State Street Bank Poland.

The new facility will have five floors spanning an area of 27,400 square metres. It will be built in an “intelligent” and sustainable way, with LEED gold standard environmental certification and featuring 40 chargers for electric vehicles.

The investment is estimated at a value of almost 327 million zloty (€72 million), according to a project summary submitted to officials. Intel has also been granted 57 million zloty (€12.6 million) for its construction and furnishing from the EU’s regional development “smart growth” programme.

“The expansion of the current campus with another building, IGK6, proves that Intel focuses on further development in Poland,” says Irina Ledyaeva, Intel’s public affairs lead for Germany and Poland.

Construction is set to start this year and continue until into 2023. The company expects to employ at least 410 new staff members in its new building.

“Experienced engineers are currently in greatest demand,” Ledyaeva told Notes from Poland. “In addition, we are open to interns who are at the beginning of their careers and want to gain interesting experience in our company.”

Intel has had a presence in Gdańsk since 1999, when it took over the local branch and engineers of Olicom, a Danish manufacturer of data networking solutions.

According to a report last year by Invest in Pomerania, of 158 business service sector firms in the coastal Tri-city area (which comprises Gdańsk and the smaller neighbouring cities of Sopot and Gdynia), two-thirds specialise in IT and employ a total of 15,000 specialists.

The Tricity’s total floor space occupied by service centres is expected to pass one million square metres this year, according to Poland’s Association of Business Service Leaders (ABSL). That makes it the fourth largest metropolitan area in Poland for modern business services, behind Warsaw, Kraków and Wrocław.

Last May, Microsoft announced a $1 billion investment in Poland. It is the country’s largest ever IT investment and will feature Microsoft’s first data centre in the region, providing cloud services to business and government.

In 2019, Google too announced plans to open a cloud hub in Poland serving the Central and Eastern Europe region. Both projects are being run in partnership with the Polish Development Fund (PFR) and PKO BP, Poland’s largest bank.

Main image credit: Almondox/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY 3.0)

Maria Wilczek

Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.