California Forever unveils the Solano Foundry: a new home for frontier tech, an hour north of Silicon Valley

Thu Jul 17 2025

Today, California Forever is charting a new course to restore an industry that once defined California: high-tech manufacturing. We’re unveiling the 2,100-acre, 40 million-square-foot Solano Foundry, the nation’s largest, most strategically located, and best designed advanced manufacturing park – and a blueprint for the bipartisan build agenda.

For decades, Silicon Valley’s breakthroughs, from aerospace to semiconductors, leveraged a tight feedback loop between R&D labs and factory floors from San Jose to Fremont. As production migrated offshore, that loop became stretched across thousands of miles, slowing iteration, eroding supply‑chain resilience, and ceding high‑growth industries, such as robotics and drones, to competitors in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and other parts of China.

In recent years, American industry has experienced a renaissance, but the lack of entitled, available, ready-to-build land near Silicon Valley, coupled with a critical housing shortage in California, has pushed new factories to other parts of the country. This reshoring to distant states has been a partial solution, but it comes at a cost: it slows down American innovation, as R&D teams based in Silicon Valley are forced to spend days traveling back and forth to remote factories, hindering collaboration and rapid iteration.

The Solano Foundry offers the solution: a space for state‑of‑the‑art production facilities just an hour north of Silicon Valley, so American innovators can iterate at a pace that outperforms our adversaries, keep intellectual property at home, and strengthen our national security.

Moreover, the Solano Foundry builds on its proximity to two other major national security assets. Seven miles south, the planned Solano Shipyard can use components built in the Solano Foundry to produce autonomous and conventional maritime vessels, creating a virtuous cycle of demand for precision parts and skilled labor. Five miles northeast, Travis Airforce Base—the largest Air Mobility Command base in America—offers significant opportunities for collaboration with our military, as well as a robust talent pool of highly-qualified retirees and spouses to work in advanced manufacturing roles.

Purpose‑built for innovative, high-growth industries

The Solano Foundry will be the largest advanced manufacturing park in the United States—a 2,100-acre, 40 million square feet thriving ecosystem for the most innovative industries, including advanced transportation, robotics, energy, and defense. Key features include:

• 90‑day permitting & room to grow: by completing 90% of usual entitlement and utility connection steps upfront as part of the master-planned development, Solano Foundry offers permitting as fast as 90 days, enabling companies to break ground quickly and expand to millions of square feet, without leaving the region.
• Co-located with vibrant neighborhoods: Solano Foundry is part of the proposed new community, which includes vibrant walkable neighborhoods with over 150,000 new homes, offering attractive living options for the workforce.
• Ample, affordable power generation: the community plan includes over 2 GW of renewable and baseload power through on-site generation and interconnection, and over 5,000 GWh of battery storage.
• Clustered industries: incorporating lessons from China’s hardware clusters, the Solano Foundry enables advanced transportation, robotics, energy, and defense start‑ups to co‑locate R&D, prototyping, and scaled production on a single campus.
• Connected supply chains: planned direct freight‑rail links to the Union Pacific line, the future Solano Shipyard, and manufacturing centers in Fremont, Reno, and Tracy reduce logistics friction and cost.
• Strong transport: range of transportation options connect the Solano Foundry to the new city and the broader region, slashing commute times.
• An innovation ecosystem to foster connection and help companies thrive: the Solano Foundry brings together entrepreneurs, capital, education and training, fostering the unique synergies that only a true innovation ecosystem can provide.

Research from JLL validates the vision

In a new whitepaper, “People, Power, Place: Making the Solano Foundry the new home of advanced manufacturing in California”, global real estate leader JLL identifies the Solano Foundry as a prime location for America’s manufacturing revival. The research, from JLL’s new Advanced Manufacturing Group, benchmarked the Solano Foundry against 13 mega‑industrial parks in California and nationwide and concluded that, “The evidence suggests that the Solano Foundry is the state’s strongest opportunity to revitalize its manufacturing sector and bring manufacturing jobs back to California.”

Key findings:

• People: Solano County benefits from both a local skilled manufacturing workforce and access to the talent pool in the broader  Bay Area. Moreover, the East Bay & North Bay region has a significant available labor pool—there are 6.1 unemployed manufacturing workers per job posting.
• Power: California Forever’s new city plan includes over 2 GW of renewable and baseload power through on-site generation and interconnection, and over 5,000 GWh of battery storage, providing ample and affordable generation. The broader California Forever holdings include natural gas and wind generation, and multiple transmission lines and substations, creating the potential for Solano County to become an energy hub for the broader region.
• Place: The 2,100-acre site presents a large-scale opportunity to create an advanced manufacturing cluster, with unique competitive advantages, including clustered ecosystems where R&D can be located near manufacturing to accelerate innovation, expedited permitting as fast as 90-days, and space for fast-growth companies to scale flexibly and sustainably, just an hour from Silicon Valley. Further, the proposed new city will offer attractive middle-income homes in walkable neighborhoods for the workforce

The study concludes that the project can generate ~40,000 generational jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity for Solano County.

“Advanced manufacturing is not just a trend—it’s the foundation of the new American economy,” said JLL’s CEO of Americas Markets, John Gates. “With our new Advanced Manufacturing Group and exclusive partnership with California Forever, we’re putting coordinated resources behind this transformationalshift andbringing hardware production to Solano Foundry’s campus. The team’s visionary plan for this site has the potential to attract the nation’s top engineers and innovators capable of designing the future.”

Turning a new page for California

The Solano Foundry is launching during a pivotal time in California, coming just weeks after the state enacted its most sweeping land use reforms in decades—measures designed to dramatically accelerate building and development across the state. As California embraces a new era of abundance and building, the Solano Foundry is ideally positioned to lead the state’s efforts to reclaim its role as the home of frontier tech.

“Silicon Valley earned its name because chips were once made here alongside code,” said Jan Sramek, Founder & CEO of California Forever. “The Solano Foundry restores that formula. By bringing R&D and manufacturing back together, we’ll outpace global competitors, streamline supply chains, and ignite a new era where products are both designed and made in California.”

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California Forever has appointed JLL as exclusive leasing agent for Solano Foundry. Companies interested in securing space or learning more about partnership opportunities can contact foundry@californiaforever.com or advancedmanufacturing@jll.com.

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