Tag Archives: Company announcements

Our new office is a love letter to Atlanta

Google has been a part of Atlanta for more than 20 years. There are more than 1,000 full-time Google employees in Georgia — in two offices in Atlanta and a data center in Douglas County — helping to build and support our products, and help our partners and customers across the South and nationally.

We recently opened our doors to the newest office space in Midtown Atlanta at the 1105 West Peachtree building. This new Google office encompasses 19 floors spanning 500,000 square feet, and is a part of our broader investment in local communities across the U.S.

Atlanta has a rich civil rights history and is home to top Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and tech talent. Continuing our long-term investment here will help support our Black Googler community in Atlanta, in line with our racial equity commitments.

Inspired by the city’s legacy for social change, our office was designed as an homage to the people of Atlanta, with each floor an ode to Atlanta’s cultural, musical and artistic history. We worked with more than 50 local and diverse companies to design and build the new space, including artwork from more than 20 local artists.

A giant heart outlining the Google Atlanta sign greets you in the lobby. One of the staircases features a rainbow design — in support and celebration of the LGBTQ+ community — inspired by the city’s nearby rainbow crosswalks. The WERD Cafe, our Googler cafeteria, is named for the first Black-owned and programmed U.S. radio station.

Our commitment to Atlanta extends far beyond the walls of our new office. In 2021, Google products helped provide $13.21 billion of economic activity for tens of thousands of Georgia businesses, nonprofits, publishers, creators and developers.

Today, we’re announcing a $1 million commitment to the Urban League of Atlanta to support their work in training underserved communities throughout Georgia. This grant will help jobseekers get digital skills training and place them in high-growth jobs.

On top of this, to bring equitable opportunities to more Georgians, we’re partnering with local community organizations and universities. We’re working with HBCUs like Clark Atlanta University and Spelman College to attract top talent, and partnering with the Technical College System of Georgia to offer Google Career Certificates to 22 colleges across the state at no cost.

Lastly, we are partnering with Mayor Andre Dickens and the Atlanta BeltLine to launch the Atlanta BeltLine Marketplace, an effort to help local Black, Latino and women-owned small businesses reach new customers by retrofitting rail cars into office spaces. We’re providing Wi-Fi for the rail containers, a complete suite of Google Nest products, Chromebooks and free digital skills training.

We look forward to continuing to support and partner with our customers, employees and local communities in Atlanta for years to come.

Our new office is a love letter to Atlanta

Google has been a part of Atlanta for more than 20 years. There are more than 1,000 full-time Google employees in Georgia — in two offices in Atlanta and a data center in Douglas County — helping to build and support our products, and help our partners and customers across the South and nationally.

We recently opened our doors to the newest office space in Midtown Atlanta at the 1105 West Peachtree building. This new Google office encompasses 19 floors spanning 500,000 square feet, and is a part of our broader investment in local communities across the U.S.

Atlanta has a rich civil rights history and is home to top Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and tech talent. Continuing our long-term investment here will help support our Black Googler community in Atlanta, in line with our racial equity commitments.

Inspired by the city’s legacy for social change, our office was designed as an homage to the people of Atlanta, with each floor an ode to Atlanta’s cultural, musical and artistic history. We worked with more than 50 local and diverse companies to design and build the new space, including artwork from more than 20 local artists.

A giant heart outlining the Google Atlanta sign greets you in the lobby. One of the staircases features a rainbow design — in support and celebration of the LGBTQ+ community — inspired by the city’s nearby rainbow crosswalks. The WERD Cafe, our Googler cafeteria, is named for the first Black-owned and programmed U.S. radio station.

Our commitment to Atlanta extends far beyond the walls of our new office. In 2021, Google products helped provide $13.21 billion of economic activity for tens of thousands of Georgia businesses, nonprofits, publishers, creators and developers.

Today, we’re announcing a $1 million commitment to the Urban League of Atlanta to support their work in training underserved communities throughout Georgia. This grant will help jobseekers get digital skills training and place them in high-growth jobs.

On top of this, to bring equitable opportunities to more Georgians, we’re partnering with local community organizations and universities. We’re working with HBCUs like Clark Atlanta University and Spelman College to attract top talent, and partnering with the Technical College System of Georgia to offer Google Career Certificates to 22 colleges across the state at no cost.

Lastly, we are partnering with Mayor Andre Dickens and the Atlanta BeltLine to launch the Atlanta BeltLine Marketplace, an effort to help local Black, Latino and women-owned small businesses reach new customers by retrofitting rail cars into office spaces. We’re providing Wi-Fi for the rail containers, a complete suite of Google Nest products, Chromebooks and free digital skills training.

We look forward to continuing to support and partner with our customers, employees and local communities in Atlanta for years to come.

Bringing Google to Chicago’s Thompson Center

In 2000, Google’s Chicago office consisted of two people in River North. Now, that presence has grown to more than 1,800 employees in Fulton Market. And today, we’re announcing we intend to buy the iconic James R. Thompson Center building in Chicago’s Loop upon future renovation, which deepens our commitment to Google’s long-term presence in the city. The cost of the existing unrenovated building is $105 million.

This will support engineering work in Chicago and helps advance the growth of Google’s partners and customers across the Midwest and nationally. It also helps us meet the future needs of our flexible hybrid workforce. By establishing a presence in Chicago’s central business district, we will be getting in on the ground floor of a broader revitalization of the Loop.

The Thompson Center will provide employees with unparalleled public transit access as the only building in the city where six L train lines converge, easily connecting Chicago’s South, West and North sides. Once renovated to a Class A environmentally friendly office building, we anticipate occupying the Thompson Center starting in 2026.

Image of the Thompson Center’s existing interior space, which will be renovated.

Google will occupy the Thompson Center once renovations are completed. (Photo credit: Courtesy of Jahn)

The tech sector’s economic impact in Chicago has been significant. The city has become a global tech hub generating new jobs and top talent. A recent economic impact study shows creating one high-tech job generates another 4.4 jobs in the local economy. In 2020, Google’s employees in Chicago supported over 4,600 indirect jobs in Illinois, for a total economic impact of $2 billion.

We love being part of Chicago’s diverse and vibrant community. It’s important to us to be good neighbors and continue to focus on helping local communities, organizations and people emerge stronger from the pandemic:

  • Since 2007, Google.org has awarded over $18 million in grants to a wide range of nonprofits and organizations based in Illinois, including grants that help place jobseekers from under-resourced Chicago communities into in-demand careers.
  • Grow with Google has trained more than 358,000 people across Illinois in digital skills.
  • Google for Startups partners with leading startups that support the state's technology entrepreneurs, like 1871 and Bunker Labs. For example, as part of our inaugural Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund, five Chicago startups founded by Latino entrepreneurs each recently received $100,000 in cash awards to help fuel their businesses. And over the past two years, the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund has provided cash awards and support to promising entrepreneurs across the country, including to Chicago-based companies A.M Money, Five to Nine, 4Degrees, LifeWeb 360, Cyber Pop-Up and GoLogic.

We look forward to continuing to be an active part of Chicago’s community for many years to come.

Bringing Google to Chicago’s Thompson Center

In 2000, Google’s Chicago office consisted of two people in River North. Now, that presence has grown to more than 1,800 employees in Fulton Market. And today, we’re announcing we intend to buy the iconic James R. Thompson Center building in Chicago’s Loop upon future renovation, which deepens our commitment to Google’s long-term presence in the city. The cost of the existing unrenovated building is $105 million.

This will support engineering work in Chicago and helps advance the growth of Google’s partners and customers across the Midwest and nationally. It also helps us meet the future needs of our flexible hybrid workforce. By establishing a presence in Chicago’s central business district, we will be getting in on the ground floor of a broader revitalization of the Loop.

The Thompson Center will provide employees with unparalleled public transit access as the only building in the city where six L train lines converge, easily connecting Chicago’s South, West and North sides. Once renovated to a Class A environmentally friendly office building, we anticipate occupying the Thompson Center starting in 2026.

Image of the Thompson Center’s existing interior space, which will be renovated.

Google will occupy the Thompson Center once renovations are completed. (Photo credit: Courtesy of Jahn)

The tech sector’s economic impact in Chicago has been significant. The city has become a global tech hub generating new jobs and top talent. A recent economic impact study shows creating one high-tech job generates another 4.4 jobs in the local economy. In 2020, Google’s employees in Chicago supported over 4,600 indirect jobs in Illinois, for a total economic impact of $2 billion.

We love being part of Chicago’s diverse and vibrant community. It’s important to us to be good neighbors and continue to focus on helping local communities, organizations and people emerge stronger from the pandemic:

  • Since 2007, Google.org has awarded over $18 million in grants to a wide range of nonprofits and organizations based in Illinois, including grants that help place jobseekers from under-resourced Chicago communities into in-demand careers.
  • Grow with Google has trained more than 358,000 people across Illinois in digital skills.
  • Google for Startups partners with leading startups that support the state's technology entrepreneurs, like 1871 and Bunker Labs. For example, as part of our inaugural Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund, five Chicago startups founded by Latino entrepreneurs each recently received $100,000 in cash awards to help fuel their businesses. And over the past two years, the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund has provided cash awards and support to promising entrepreneurs across the country, including to Chicago-based companies A.M Money, Five to Nine, 4Degrees, LifeWeb 360, Cyber Pop-Up and GoLogic.

We look forward to continuing to be an active part of Chicago’s community for many years to come.

Three years in: Our $1 billion Bay Area housing effort

The Bay Area is our home, and we’re helping our hometown communities solve challenging problems. In 2019, we committed $1 billion to help increase the Bay Area’s housing supply and support organizations on the front lines of homelessness. Over the last three years, we’ve been making investments and allocating land to help developers create new affordable housing units in all corners of the region.

A map illustration of the Bay Area with 23 red markers that indicate the location of affordable housing projects that Google has committed money to from our $250 million investment affordable housing fund.

A map of our current commitments from our $250 million affordable housing investment fund.

Investing $1 billion across the Bay Area

So far, we’ve allocated a total of $128 million of our $250 million investment fund to 18 organizations, which has supported the development of 23 affordable housing projects across the Bay Area.

A rendering of a multi-story residential complex painted light brown and yellow.

A rendering of Meridian, a 90-unit affordable housing development, in Sunnyvale, California. Image credit: Steinberg Hart.

As part of our commitment to give $750 million worth of our land to housing development, we’ve worked closely with elected officials and residents to propose plans where residential units, offices, retail spaces and open space will coexist on our land. The San José City Council unanimously approved our Downtown West project in May 2021, which calls for 4,000 housing units. In addition, we’ve submitted plans for mixed-use developments in Mountain View and are working with city staff to have Middlefield Park voted on by Mountain View City Council by the end of 2022, followed by North Bayshore in 2023. Together, these plans consider a total of 8,900 housing units, which would be developed by a partner.

While we’ve made progress across the Bay Area through funding and land allocation, we know that's only part of the solution. Fighting the housing crisis requires innovation and collaboration across the community. So today, we’re also sharing how we’re using philanthropy to test new methods of intervention with trusted nonprofit leaders.

Using philanthropy to test innovative solutions

Over the next three years, we’re giving more than $10 million of our 2019 $50 million Google.org grant commitment and providing pro bono support to select Bay Area nonprofits. These organizations are starting programs to test the impact of cash transfers on housing stability for community members experiencing homelessness. With cash transfers, money is directly provided to people to spend on things like rent, medical expenses, food, or other day-to-day expenses. Our funding will go toward direct cash support, infrastructure for the nonprofits and randomized impact evaluation. This way, critical research can be used to have a systemic effect to assist in providing stable housing.

Google.org has been a longtime supporter of cash transfers, having distributed over $31 million globally, and providing over 235,000 households with cash support to improve their financial resilience and weather economic uncertainty. Research has shown that giving recipients the ability to decide how they spend their money leads to increases in economic and psychological well-being, physical health and household purchasing power. A randomized evaluation in Canada found a one-time cash transfer to individuals experiencing homelessness leads to quicker housing stability and spending fewer days unsheltered.

There is little to no research, however, of the effect of cash transfers on a demographic like Bay Area homeless communities. To better understand the impact, Google.org is supporting the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) in partnering with several leading homeless service providers in the Bay Area. Through the Bay Area Evaluation (BAE) Incubator, providers are building their capacity to design and implement randomized evaluations of cash transfer programs.

In addition to J-PAL North America’s effort, Google.org is supporting some emerging cash transfer pilots:

  • Bay Area Community Services (BACS), alongside UCSF, is running a longitudinal study aimed at determining the effect of cash assistance for 100 Oakland households on housing stability and homelessness prevention while also measuring potential reduction of racial disparities in those who become homeless.
  • Chapin Hall, in partnership with Point Source Youth and Larkin Street Youth Services, will be launching community engagement work to prepare for a Bay Area expansion of a national effort. Their program tests the effectiveness of direct cash transfers and support programs on housing stability and well-being for young adults facing housing insecurity.
  • Miracle Messages, in partnership with the University of Southern California, will conduct a randomized controlled trial for people experiencing homelessness. The trial adds cash assistance to social support programming to measure multiple outcomes including housing stability, food security and mental health.

As we provide funding, we’re evaluating impact to determine the most effective cash transfer delivery models and programs for reducing homelessness. It’s our hope these grants will not only help individuals and families experiencing housing insecurity, but also expand the evidence base around the effectiveness of cash transfer programs, particularly in high-income communities like the Bay Area.

With this $10 million in grant funding, we’ve granted a total of $18 million of our 2019 Google.org commitment to Bay Area nonprofits providing services like food distribution, job training and case management. Through these grants, these organizations will help provide services to more than 90,000 people and house 10,000 individuals over the span of four years. It’s a testament to the impact philanthropy can have on the housing crisis.

Looking ahead

We can’t celebrate the last three years of work without recognizing the work that lies ahead. There is still a severe housing shortage of more than 400,000 in the Bay Area, and we’ll continue to work with housing experts, developers, nonprofit leaders and elected officials to find opportunities to build units and provide services to people as quickly as possible.

Learn more about our housing commitment at g.co/housingcommitment.

Source: The Keyword


Reuniting the historic Stonewall Inn

Photo of Stonewall Inn facade taken by CyArk during a documentation project in March, 2017. Learn more about the Stonewall Inn with CyArk on Google Arts & Culture

The Stonewall Inn is known around the world as the site of the Stonewall Riots, which ignited the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement in 1969 in New York City. But at the time of the rebellion, the Stonewall Inn actually consisted of what is now two locations: 53 Christopher Street, the current location of the Stonewall Inn bar, and 51 Christopher Street next door. Over the years, as rents rose, the two sites were separated, and there was little evidence left that 51 Christopher Street played such a vital role in the heritage of the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

On Friday, this all changed. LGBTQ+ activists, with Google’s support, joined local elected officials to break ground on the new Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center, reuniting the two sites.

Four people hold shovels in front of a Pride flag and Google and YouTube logos.

Ann Marie Gothard, Governor Kathy Hochul, Senator Chuck Schumer and Google and Alphabet SVP and CFO Ruth Porat at Friday's groundbreaking.

Scheduled to officially open in the summer of 2024, the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center’s mission is to preserve, advance and celebrate the legacy of the Stonewall Rebellion. In 2016, then-President Barack Obama designated the 0.19-acre area, formerly known as Christopher Park, and the surrounding Christopher Street as the Stonewall National Monument, making it the first U.S. national monument dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community and their fight for equal rights.

Through a grant of $1 million from Google.org to help acquire the lease, Google is helping make this dream a reality. Visitors to the center will discover an immersive experience that takes them on a tour of LGBTQ+ history and culture. The center will host in-person and virtual tours, lectures, exhibitions and visual arts. It will also be the home base for the National Park Service Rangers who maintain the Stonewall National Monument.

Interior photograph of Stonewall Inn bar without people inside. A wooden bar and stools are visible and alcohol is lined up behind the bar, along with T-shirts for sale.

Photo of Stonewall Inn interior taken by CyArk during a documentation project in March, 2017. Learn more about the Stonewall Inn with CyArk on Google Arts & Culture.

Google has been deeply invested with preserving and sharing the history of the Stonewall Riots for many years. In 2019, on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, we provided support for Stonewall Forever, an interactive “living monument” sharing 50 years of LGBTQ+ history. With a $1.5 million grant from Google.org and volunteers from Google’s Creative Lab, the LGBT Community Center of New York City (The Center) launched the living monument which connects diverse voices from the Stonewall era to the stories of millions of LGBTQ+ people today. The living monument contains countless colorful pieces that people can click on to view digitized historical artifacts, oral histories and interviews from today. In the years since, participation in Stonewall Forever has grown as thousands of people have added their history by uploading photos, messages and stories.

Illustration of the New York City skyline with a rainbow of small squares bursting out of an area of the city where the Stonewall Inn sits

Launched in 2019 by the LGBT Community Center of New York City, Stonewall Forever is an interactive living monument sharing 50 years of LGBTQ+ history.

Supporting the LGBTQ+ community has been a longstanding commitment from Google. By supporting the reunification of the Stonewall Inn and the development of the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center, we’re proud to do our part to preserve and commemorate the achievements of the past and to take big steps toward a brighter, more equitable future.

Making our marketing, and Cannes, more accessible

Growing up as a child of deaf parents, Tony Lee, a designer on my team, says he always had one foot in the hearing world and one in the deaf world. When the pandemic separated Tony and his parents, they used Google's Live Transcribe app and Google Meet to communicate from afar and share important moments, like the birth of Tony’s son, who is the first grandchild on his side. This experience, which Tony shared in our commercial “A CODA Story,” touched people around the world. When we broaden the scope of our creative work, we truly see how powerful inclusive marketing can be.

People are exposed to around two million ads per year, but many say they don’t see themselves or their community accurately represented in them. Everybody deserves to feel a sense of belonging. As marketers, it’s our job to make sure the stories we tell are fully inclusive. This also means making our marketing accessible so that all disabled people, 15% of the global population, can fully access and engage with our content, products and experiences.

We want to give marketers, advertisers and all creatives the tools they need to make work that both resonates with people with disabilities and accurately represents the disabled community. That’s why today we are expanding our inclusive marketing toolkit All In to include new insights on accessible marketing. This in-depth playbook was created in partnership with disability inclusion experts, like Disability:IN and LaVant Consulting, and influential industry organizations like the American Association of Ad Agencies and Ad Council have endorsed it.

And what better place to introduce these insights than at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, where a key theme this year is representing the underrepresented in creative work. As the first official accessibility partner of Cannes Lions, we are working with Cannes to make sure the Festival itself is built for people with disabilities. This includes providing American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters and using Live Transcribe for real-time captioning. We’ll also make sure the Google Beach, our home base at Cannes, is wheelchair accessible and provides CART captioning, Live Transcribe on Google Pixels for real-time captioning and ASL interpreters so all of Google’s programming meets best practices for accessibility.

When we launched All In last year, our goal was to rally the industry to tap into our collective responsibility to create work where everyone feels seen. In that time, we have expanded our partnerships to include a wider breadth of experiences, including releasing the industry’s first in-depth research on plus-size inclusion in partnership with the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.

With the continued support of our partners to implement these insights, we are seeing meaningful improvement. For example, our annual audit of Google's consumer marketing creative found that our top campaigns in the U.S. in 2021 provided more prominent speaking roles for women and exceeded our goals for better representing members of Asian, Black and Latino/Latinx communities.

We’ve also made progress in how we represent people with disabilities in our ads, but still have a ways to go. In 2021, disabled people were represented in 5.6% of our ads, a 5x increase from the previous year. We also dramatically reduced disability stereotypes in our work by completely eliminating depictions of people with disabilities as dependent on others or as friends only with other people with disabilities, and we avoided inspirational tropes in 96% of those ads. But we know it’s not enough to simply build creative that authentically features people with disabilities and their intersectional identities, we need to make sure that all disabled people can access that creative. That’s why we’re equally focused on applying the latest accessible marketing best practices, now shared on All In.

We’ll continue to take steps forward. Next up, we’ll expand All In globally, rolling out audience insights in more countries later this year. We also plan to partner with brands across a number of industries to invest in inclusive marketing initiatives across the globe and share our collective learnings with the broader creative field.

More than 20 years ago, Google started with an ambitious goal to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. We can only accomplish our mission when everyone can see themselves reflected in what we do. Our commitment to ending harmful stereotypes, portraying underrepresented communities and addressing inequality in advertising is not only our responsibility, it’s also our motivation and guiding principle. We’re encouraged to see so many others on this inclusive marketing journey with us and look forward to sharing ideas and learnings this week at Cannes and in the future.

Google acquires Raxium

Today we’re announcing that Google has acquired Raxium, an innovator in single panel MicroLED display technologies. The team at Raxium has spent five years creating miniaturized, cost-effective and energy efficient high-resolution displays that have laid the foundation for future display technologies. Raxium’s technical expertise in this area will play a key role as we continue to invest in our hardware efforts.

Raxium is based in Fremont, California and will join Google’s Devices & Services team. We’re thrilled to have the team at Raxium on board to help further our goal of building helpful devices and services to improve people’s daily lives.

Our plans to invest $9.5 billion in the U.S. in 2022

Google’s offices and data centers provide vital anchors to our local communities and help us contribute to their economies. In the U.S., over the past five years, we’ve invested more than $37 billion in our offices and data centers in 26 states, creating over 40,000 full-time jobs. That’s in addition to the more than $40 billion in research and development we invested in the U.S. in 2020 and 2021.

Today we’re announcing plans to invest approximately $9.5 billion in our U.S. offices and data centers in 2022. (Full details of where we’re investing are below.) Along with these investments, we expect to create at least 12,000 new full-time Google jobs by the end of the year, and thousands more among our local suppliers, partners and communities.

Investing in our offices and data centers for the future

It might seem counterintuitive to step up our investment in physical offices even as we embrace more flexibility in how we work. Yet we believe it’s more important than ever to invest in our campuses and that doing so will make for better products, a greater quality of life for our employees, and stronger communities.

Alt Text: Animated map showing the locations of Google offices and data centers and the states where Google plans to invest in 2022.

Our contribution to communities starts with the jobs we create, both directly and indirectly. According to new research published by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute today, creating one job at a high-technology firm generates over four more jobs in the local economy.

At the same time, our investments in data centers will continue to power the digital tools and services that help people and businesses thrive. And as we work towards running our offices and data centers on carbon-free energy 24/7 by 2030, we’re aiming to set new standards for green building design — including pursuing certification through the International Living Future Institute for buildings like our new office in Sunnyvale, California.

Creating jobs and strengthening communities

Today we are also releasing our 2021 Economic Impact Report, which reflects Google’s wider contribution to the economy. The report shows we helped provide $617 billion in economic activity for millions of American businesses, nonprofits, creators, developers and publishers last year. In addition, the Android app economy helped create nearly two million jobs last year, and YouTube’s creative ecosystem supported 394,000 jobs in 2020.

We also continue to help people get the skills they need to succeed in today’s economy, from our role as a founding member of the Michigan Central innovation district in Detroit to our $100 million Google Career Certificates Fund — a new financial model for helping people access education and digital skills.

Where we’re investing in 2022

Here are some more details on where we’ll be investing in 2022.

South Region

In Georgia, we’re opening our new Atlanta office this year and continuing to invest in our data center in Douglas County. In Texas, we’re also making progress on our new downtown Austin office, which is currently under construction, and continuing to invest in our Midlothian data center. And we’re continuing to invest in our data centers in Tennessee, Virginia and Oklahoma.

Midwest Region

We’re continuing to invest in our data centers in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and in Nebraska.

East Region

We continue to invest in our long-term office presence in New York, and make improvements to our Cambridge and Pittsburgh campuses.

Central Region

We’re continuing to build out our campus in Boulder.

West Region

In California, we’ll continue to invest in our offices and support affordable housing initiatives in the Bay Area as part of our $1 billion housing commitment. Elsewhere on the West Coast, we’ve opened a new office in downtown Portland, and we’re continuing to invest in our data center in The Dalles. We’re also investing in our Kirkland and Seattle campuses in Washington State. In Nevada, our data center in Storey County is now operational, with plans to expand it, and we’re investing more in our Henderson facility, too.

Extending our support to Ukrainian startups

The ongoing humanitarian crisis in Ukraine has been devastating to witness. Much like the rest of the international community, our response has evolved as the circumstances have developed. In addition to supporting the refugee crisis and fighting misinformation, we’re investing in Ukraine’s people and businesses.

Today, we’re announcing a $5 million Google for Startups Ukraine Support Fund to allocate equity-free cash awards throughout 2022. Selected Ukraine-based startups will be announced on a rolling basis and will receive up to $100,000 in non-dilutive funding as well as ongoing Google mentorship, product support and Cloud credits. This hands-on support is designed to help Ukrainian entrepreneurs maintain and grow their businesses, strengthen their community and build a foundation for post-war economic recovery.

Ukraine has a strong and vibrant startup community. Of the roughly 2000 startups in Ukraine, 126 startups have raised venture capital funding since the beginning of 2021. Yesterday, our CEO Sundar Pichai met with a number of these Ukrainian entrepreneurs at our Google for Startups Campus Warsaw. Through these conversations, we heard practical ways that Google could help the startup community.

Funding is only one element of the support that is required. We’ve invited Ukrainian startups to use Google for Startups Campus Warsaw space as a temporary office. The first few startups — predominantly run by women who have fled the country — are already working from Campus, and we’ve witnessed their determination to succeed.

Support for Ukrainian-led startups will help them succeed and build the tech that their country needs now. And as the region starts to recover, startups and tech companies will be key to rebuilding the Ukrainian economy, creating jobs, and positively impact the cities they make their homes.