Located in the heart of the UK's ‘Silicon Fen’, the Huawei Campus (pictured) was approved by the local planning authority on Thursday, following Huawei’s acquisition of a 500 acre plot of land in the city in 2018. The site includes over 50 acres of brownfield land.
Work at the facility will span researching, development, and the manufacture of optoelectronics products.
“The UK is home to a vibrant and open market, as well as some of the best talent the world has to offer," said Victor Zhang, VP of Huawei.
“It's the perfect location for this integrated innovation campus. Through close collaboration with research institutes, universities, and local industry, we want to advance optical communications technology for the industry as a whole, while doing our part to support the UK's broader Industrial Strategy.
“Ultimately, we want to help enshrine the UK's leading position in optoelectronics and promote UK tech on a global scale,” he continued.
The first phase of the campus, estimated to cost £1 billion, will see construction of a 50,000 square metre facility on a nine-acre plot of land and, once operational, it will act as the international headquarters of Huawei's optoelectronics business.
Optoelectronics is a key technology used in fibre optic communication systems and this investment aims to bring the best of such technology to data centres and network infrastructure around the world.
The firm said its investment will provide a “major boost for high tech development in the region, helping to further cement Cambridge as a global innovation hub”.
Huawei arrived in the UK in the year 2000 and employs 1,600 people in the country, with 400 local jobs expected to be created during phase one of the campus construction project.
