Chipmaking giant Nvidia is betting big on North Texas being a key factor in the world’s AI revolution; so much so its celebrity-status CEO Jensen Huang visited the region for the second time in as many months.

He spent Tuesday afternoon at Wistron’s new manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, where Nvidia AI supercomputers will be built and tested as part of a greater effort to reshore high-tech manufacturing.

“We want to reindustrialize the United States and bring back, or onshore, manufacturing again,” Huang told The Dallas Morning News in an exclusive interview before the event. “If you look at the last several years as the AI journey stated, we’ve created chip plants in the United States, packaging plants, testing companies, and here we are manufacturing and assembling these giant supercomputers.”

Nvidia’s AI supercomputers are the “engines of a new type of data center created for the sole purpose of processing artificial intelligence — AI factories that are the infrastructure powering a new AI industry,” according to the company.

Huang was joined by Wistron Chairman Simon Lin; Fort Worth officials, business leaders including Hillwood Chairman Ross Perot Jr., who developed AllianceTexas; and community stakeholders for the grand opening ceremony of Wistron D1.

A theme of the event was “Powering the AI world from Texas.”

During the ceremony, executives unveiled and signed the first Nvidia GB300 Grace Blackwell Ultra Superchip built at the facility.

“Made in Texas, USA,” Huang said as the crowd erupted with applause.

Wistron, one of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers, announced last August plans to establish two AI supercomputer manufacturing facilities at Hillwood’s AllianceTexas in Fort Worth and Denton County. At the time Wistron said the developments represented a $761 million investment.

The two sites will be a 27,000-acre industrial hub with the company’s footprint spanning more than 1.1 million square feet, according to previous reporting. The facilities are expected to create more than 800 jobs. 

“We’ve been known as the city of where the West begins, a city that’s built by pioneers,” Jessica Rogers, Fort Worth’s director of economic development, told the crowd. “So, it seems fitting that you’re here with us today. From railroads to cattle to oil and gas to aerospace and aviation, this community has continually embraced new opportunities and evolved with the times and today we are entering another frontier — one driven by artificial intelligence, advanced computing, and emerging technologies.”

Nvidia — one of, if not the, most valuable companies in the world — boasts bringing the advanced manufacturing back to American facilities.

“Just as agriculture is a fundamental infrastructure of society, in the future these AI factories will be a fundamental infrastructure of society,” Huang said during a fireside chat with Lin. “It’s a very sensible thing. We have roads and agriculture and railroads. In the future, we’ll have AI factories and the internet.”

In mid-June, he took part in a groundbreaking ceremony at Coherent’s facility in Sherman. It’s the world’s first and largest-volume production 6-inch indium phosphide fabrication plant. 

The project, which has accumulated $650 million in investments, is set to double the size of the manufacturing production area to 140,000 square feet, and company leaders say the production capacity will quadruple. 

Huang told The News there could be more investments to come for Nvidia in Texas.

“Texas is big,” Huang said. “We’re just starting north. Maybe we’ll work our way south, I don’t know. This is a great place.”

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A German aircraft engine maintenance and repair company has expanded in Fort Worth, completing a nine-figure investment and advancing plans to create more than a thousand jobs.

Munich-based MTU Aero Engines AG opened its newest operation July 8 at a 462,000-square-foot building at 2100 Eagle Parkway in AllianceTexas, Hillwood’s 27,000-acre master-planned development in north Fort Worth. The building used to be the site of American Airlines’ original maintenance base and a Rolls Royce engine plant. MTU signed a 30-year lease with the city of Fort Worth and relocated to the site in 2023.

The company states the new operation is a $120 million investment that will create 1,200 jobs, mostly consisting of engine mechanics. The company’s first customer is Brazilian airline GOL Linhas Aéreas — its workers will maintain and repair its first CFM International LEAP-1B engine, which are used in Boeing 737 Max aircraft. GOL operates more than 60 Boeing 737 Max aircraft powered by the LEAP engines.

Gernot Sell, general manager and president of MTU Maintenance Fort Worth Inc., said the deal to expand in Fort Worth was years in the making and described the site as a gem due to its existing engine test cell and aviation infrastructure.

“We thought that’s an opportunity, and we made a bold move, moving into this location without having enough customers yet by that time,” Sell said.

MTU executives such as Sell bet that the market for LEAP engines will expand, and the site will become the premier maintenance, repair and operations hub in North America. MTU eventually wants to ramp up operations to maintain, operate and repair 180 engines at a time.

“You will see pretty soon that already 30,000 engines have been sold,” he said. “That’s the biggest aviation engine program ever in the world. So, there will be a huge aftermarket that needs to be established right now, and we are at the right time, the right spot to serve the market here.”

To prepare the emerging market, MTU is hiring. That’s Coree Brickle’s job: he’s a senior recruiter for the Fort Worth site. A little over 200 employees are already working at the building, which means it could have more than 1,400 employees by the end of the year, Brickle said. He visited about 15 high schools across North Texas in the spring to help with the recruiting push.

Many employees working entry-level positions haven’t worked on an engine before, he said. MTU Maintenance adopted an in-house training program that the company implemented in Fort Worth. MTU hired four full-time instructors and every two months brings a class of 24 students to go through paid training. They have to take weekly quizzes and exams to move on to working on the engines. Most candidates come from word of mouth, he said.

“When we bring someone in, they’re selling that for me, so when I’m talking to somebody, they already have an internal presence of telling them what it’s like to work here,” Brickle said.

From a real estate perspective, Bill Burton, executive vice president of marketing and development for Hillwood, said MTU Maintenance is a good deal that’s hard to come by. The existing test cell infrastructure, which tests the engines before being installed in an airplane, was a big factor in making the deal work, he noted.

“They’re very challenging projects to attract, because they’re very capital-intensive, and most of the time companies are looking for existing facilities,” Burton said. “This engine test cell is a big part. … It’s a very unique facility in here, really, in the world, but certainly in North America.”

The Alliance area has become a hot spot for aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul operations. Companies such as Embraer and Gulfstream have also expanded maintenance facilities in the area.

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Manna Aero, the Ireland-based autonomous drone delivery startup, has been a smaller player in the United States. Founder and CEO Bobby Healy told TechCrunch that’s about to change.

The startup, fueled by the $50 million in venture capital it raised in April, said Wednesday that it’s setting up a U.S. operations and manufacturing center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that will employ about 1,000 people over the next several years. Construction on the factory is underway and Healy expects manufacturing to begin there in about a year.

As construction continues, the company will focus on scaling its operations team to about 200 to 300 people over the next 12 months, according to Healy. The pace of hiring at the factory will depend on the rate of growth outside of Tulsa, he said, noting that the company is assessing six other U.S. cities. If all goes well, Manna will start entering those cities by the end of 2027.

The end goal is to turn Manna Aero into a major U.S. drone delivery operator that competes with Zipline, Amazon, and Google’s Wing, among others.

“It’s just the size of the market here, consumer behavior, and the fact that the aggregators (DoorDash, Uber Eats) have consolidated the market so well, and they’re so well run,” Healy said, explaining the U.S. expansion. “The United States has the market that everybody wants.”

Manna isn’t entirely new to the United States. The startup began operating in 2023 in the AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone, which is part of a planned community near Dallas, Texas, developed by the real estate development company Hillwood. Healy said Manna has expanded into the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area and plans to continue to scale there over the next year.

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FORT WORTH, TX – (June 22, 2026) — Hillwood, developer of the 27,000-acre master-planned, mixed-use AllianceTexas development, today announced plans to develop Alliance Westport 16, a 1,214,969-square-foot Class A speculative industrial building in the Alliance Logistics District. Construction has commenced and completion is expected in July of 2027.

Alliance Westport 16 further advances Hillwood’s continued investment in AllianceTexas and the north Fort Worth corridor. With this project, Hillwood’s total industrial pipeline across AllianceTexas includes 8.2 million square feet under construction or in design, comprising 6.8 million square feet currently under construction and 1.4 million square feet in design.

Located within the Alliance Logistics District, Alliance Westport 16 will offer users direct access to one of the nation’s premier multimodal logistics hubs. The district is anchored by BNSF’s Alliance Intermodal Facility and designed to support efficient freight movement across air, rail and highway networks.

Alliance Westport 16 is being designed to enhance operational flexibility and cargo efficiency through direct intermodal connectivity. Planned capabilities include autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicle operations, streamlined movement between intermodal and warehouse facilities via an enhanced heavy-haul transport corridor. A private bridge connecting the site to BNSF’s Alliance Intermodal Facility is currently under construction and expected to be completed in early 2027.

“Alliance Westport 16 continues Hillwood’s AllianceTexas strategy to continually have available, ready-to-occupy Class A speculative industrial options of all sizes,” said Samuel Rhea, vice president of Hillwood. “We’re seeing extraordinary demand for million-square-foot-plus facilities that are fully integrated with improved roadway and intermodal infrastructure, and this project delivers that capability at scale. With its location in the Alliance Logistics District connecting directly to BNSF’s Alliance Intermodal Facility via a private bridge, Alliance Westport 16 is positioned to improve speed, cost and efficiency across the supply chain.”

The project will support next-generation logistics and advanced manufacturing users, with direct access to Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport and BNSF’s Alliance Intermodal Facility. Alliance Westport 16 will also connect users to a regional cargo network that includes the FedEx Ground Hub, two UPS Ground Sort Hubs, the FedEx Express Southwest Regional Air Hub and the Amazon Air Regional Hub.

Hillwood has a strong record of delivering customer-driven solutions that allow speculative buildings to expand and adapt to meet tenant requirements while maintaining aggressive schedules. Recent examples include projects for Southwire and Wistron, as well as a specialized buildout for SGS Studios.

Located on Mobility Way in Fort Worth, Alliance Westport 16 will feature a 40-foot clear height, 620-foot building depth, 60-foot loading bays and 276 trailer parking spaces, expandable to 504 total on-site spaces. The facility will include 3,000 amps of power, with the potential for a tri-load configuration and 190-foot truck courts.

Alliance Westport 16 will also benefit from Denton County’s low tax rate and several economic incentives, including the Triple Freeport Inventory Tax Exemption and Foreign Trade Zone status within Alliance FTZ #196. The project also has access to a Centralized Examination Station and U.S. Customs and Border Protection services.

Companies located within AllianceTexas will also benefit from access to Hillwood’s workforce development and education team, which helps connect employers with regional partners, training programs and hiring resources across North Texas. Through relationships with Workforce Solutions for Tarrant County and North Central Texas, local higher education institutions, area independent school districts and the Alliance Employer Hub at Tarrant County College’s Northwest Center of Excellence, AllianceTexas companies can engage directly with workforce partners to support recruitment, hiring events, customized training opportunities and long-term talent pipeline development.

The project is designed by GSR Andrade Architects. Civil engineering services were provided by Westwood, Hillwood Construction Services will serve as the general contractor, and financing was done by Fifth Third Bank.

The growth of Denton County has made the area a hot spot for development across asset classes. 

U.S. Census Bureau data show the county’s population has grown by nearly 20% since 2020, prompting large master-planned communities to spring up and manufacturers ranging from pharmaceutical companies to large-scale magnet manufacturers to move in. Denton Economic Development Director Brittany Sotelo said the growth has also helped local businesses expand. 

“We’ve seen an upward trend in building permits issued over the past five years, and it continues to rise,” Sotelo said during Bisnow’s Denton County State of the Market on May 27 at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Denton Convention Center. “We’re getting attention from regional stakeholders, and we’re also getting attention from international businesses.” 

Ross Perot Jr.’s Hillwood has two billion-dollar master-planned communities under construction in the county: the 3,200-acre Landmark project in Denton and the 617-acre Lantern development near Pilot Point. Those two projects will add 8,000 single-family homes and at least 3,000 multifamily units to the county.

As Denton County’s residential base diversifies, Realty Capital Management Managing Director Jimmy Archie said the area is reaching the point where it can support the entire employee population of major companies. 

That residential growth is key to successful projects, as Archie said he was taught to follow good school districts when planning new developments. With strong schools, residential growth and reasonably priced housing, the other asset classes will fall into place. 

“The retail follows the office … and development just stems from there,” Archie said.

Grocery goliath H-E-B, one of Texas’ biggest retailers, has followed the growth, with two stores planned for Denton. One will be part of the Landmark project, while work on the other at the corner of University Drive and Bonnie Brae Street began earlier this year. 

In addition to the new master-planned communities, residential growth has been happening for quite a while in Denton County, and Archie said nearly every other product type is beginning to catch up with that growth. 

“I’m seeing a lot of the different municipalities that have high barriers to entry be more open to bringing on quality commercial development to help the tax base,” Archie said.

MP Materials Corp. is developing a large-scale magnet manufacturing campus on a 120-acre site in Northlake. The company plans to invest $1.25B to build the campus that will boost its annual production capacity to around 10,000 metric tons of neodymium-iron-boron magnets, used in defense applications, data centers and semiconductor manufacturing.

Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis confirmed in February it plans to build a 46K SF radioligand therapy manufacturing site in Denton for cancer treatments. Work on the facility is expected to start later this year and be completed in 2028.

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We gathered together for a cocktail reception on Thursday evening at The Fort Worth Club to recognize “The 500” and honor Ross Perot Jr. and Mike Berry as co-Person of the Year.

Close to 300 attended for happy hour and short program. Among them was Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, who addressed the gathering.

She spoke to the common denominator among “The 500” honorees: grit, which is shared, she said, by all of Fort Worth’s people.

“The 500” celebrates the city’s most influential leaders across business, government, philanthropy, education, and culture.

The Fort Worth Inc. Person of the Year recognition honors individuals whose leadership and vision have had a lasting impact on the city’s business community and future growth.

The recognition of Perot Jr. and Berry, Hillwood’s chairman and president, highlights the pair’s leadership in developing AllianceTexas, the 27,000-acre master-planned development in north Fort Worth that has become one of the nation’s most significant logistics and industrial hubs.

Anchored by Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport — one of the country’s largest inland ports — AllianceTexas has helped position Fort Worth as a global center for trade, transportation, and corporate investment.

Under Perot and Berry’s leadership, Hillwood transformed what began as a bold vision for an industrial airport into a development that today serves as a major economic engine for North Texas and a national model for public-private partnership.

Perot first pitched the industrial airport concept to Fort Worth leaders four decades ago. Of the project, a city planner said then that there wasn’t “a city in America that wouldn’t give its eyeteeth for this project.”

Perot soon recruited Berry, a longtime friend from their days at Vanderbilt University, to help lead the effort.

“This is the only man on the team who I knew I had to have,” Perot says of Berry. “No. 1, I trusted him. We were great friends. And he was deep, deep Fort Worth. And I thought it was really important to have a deep Fort Worth leader run this program.”

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A new kind of transportation district for bulk operations made its debut in North Texas, bringing benefits for the city of Fort Worth.

The Alliance Logistics District’s creation was announced in November as a partnership between Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, Hillwood, a real estate development company, and Fort Worth.

“[This is] a first-of-its-kind district that enables advanced logistics operations, including autonomous and heavy-haul freight movement,” said Nicholas Konen, vice president of strategic development at Hillwood.

The Alliance Logistics District is one of the latest developments in the master-planned community that Hillwood launched, known as AllianceTexas. It consists of three streets: Mobility Way, Distribution Drive and Intermodal Parkway.

The streets are designed so that only vehicles carrying cargo can use them, with the goal of faster and more cost-effective transportation through autonomous and semiautonomous shuttles, according to a Hillwood news release.

Konen said the district should reduce congestion on nearby public roadways and lower operational costs that would impact customers.

AllianceTexas has had a cumulative economic impact of $142.9 billion since it opened in 1990, according to a Feb. 24 presentation given to Fort Worth officials. Local communities have invested an estimated $4.55 billion in property taxes since the opening of AllianceTexas, according to its most recent economic report.

“The partnership between Hillwood and the city and all of our other public partners is stronger and more active than it’s ever been,” Hillwood President Mike Berry said.

The features

Konen said the logistics district provides a more predictable environment for the technology than traditional public roadways would.

“This controlled setting allows for safer integration of advanced vehicle technologies while maintaining oversight and adaptability as conditions change,” he said.

The vehicles used at the logistics district are designed for predictable freight movements between facilities and warehouses, Konen said.

Aurora, a self-driving technology company, will start a new driverless trucking service from Fort Worth to El Paso this year, according to a company news release. The route was greenlit after a successful trial between Dallas and Houston in April 2025, an Aurora news release states. The Dallas-to-Houston route was the first regular long-haul run in the United States.

There was one reported crash incident related to autonomous trucks in Texas in the past six months, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. An Aurora truck traveling 7 mph on a frontage road in Aledo, a city west of Fort Worth, brushed against a construction barrier, administration documents state.

The truck was part of a development test and not the company’s current driverless software, according to documents. The truck was manually driven to Aurora’s Fort Worth terminal, and no injuries or damage to the barrier were reported.

Zooming in

Konen said the district will appeal mostly to logistics, automation and advanced manufacturing companies that rely on inland rail ports. It will assist a rail port that provides nearly half of the trade volume in Texas, per previous reporting.

Exports at AllianceTexas have increased by 378% between 2023 and 2024, data from Hillwood shows. AllianceTexas has more than 600 companies with operations in the area as of 2025.

Companies come from multiple industries like manufacturing, automotive, aerospace and aviation, financial services, e-commerce and pharmaceutical health care. Organizations with ties to AllianceTexas include LG Electronics, Hyundai, FedEx, Amazon, Nestle and Charles Schwab, according to Hillwood documents.

Companies like Aurora and Torc Robotics also do test drives for self-driving trucks at AllianceTexas.

What they’re saying

The Standing General Order provides NHTSA with important information about crashes involving vehicles equipped with automated driving systems … [That] has allowed the agency to identify areas for defect investigation that has led to several recalls,” said Sean Rushton, Communications Director, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

Breaking it down

Several public entities invested in AllianceTexas’ development. Of the $1.6 billion invested in 2025, 43.02% is from federal and state funds.

Looking ahead

Hillwood is investing in a new $20 million three-lane bridge to connect the BNSF intermodal facility and Alliance’s container depot. Jon Gabriel, group vice president of consumer products at BNSF Railway, said its intermodal facility helps connect roughly 1 million shipments a year to the area.

“Our facility offers sustainable and efficient capacity solutions to cargo shipper supply chains across the Metroplex,” Gabriel said.

The bridge will be mostly used by regular and autonomous semitrucks, and closed to residential traffic, according to a Hillwood news release. It will be built over FM 156 near Distribution Drive, Konen said.

“The three-lane bridge will significantly improve freight flow while reducing truck traffic on public roads,” he said.

Kelly Morris, a media and content specialist for Hillwood, said construction is underway and should be completed in late 2027.

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Training for air traffic controllers is coming to Tarrant County College Northwest after trustees approved a new associate degree program at their April board meeting.

The program will prepare students for careers in a high-wage, in-demand field as part of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Collegiate Training Initiative. 

Students who graduate from the college will bypass the FAA’s academy and begin working as trainees in “a life-changing type of career,” said David Skidmore, a TCC aviation instructor who is helping to plan the program. Skidmore had a 36-year career in air traffic control.

“When we get it off and running and we’re ready to go, it’s an exciting career for anybody who thinks they can be an air traffic controller,” Skidmore said. “We’re already well-known for our pilot training program, and we’re going to take pride in the fact that we’re going to produce quality air traffic controllers.”

The average annual pay for an air traffic controller in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area was $172,250 in 2024. Nationwide, their median pay is the highest of any field with the typical minimum educational requirement of an associate degree, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

The DFW region has an estimated 150-200 openings annually, TCC Northwest President Zarina Blankenbaker told trustees.

Nationwide, the Federal Aviation Administration is short by about 3,500 air traffic controllers. 

TCC’s program will also be the only local pipeline to the career.

“There are currently no air traffic control programs within 50 miles of DFW, and none at a Texas community college, positioning Tarrant County College to lead,” Blankenbaker told trustees.

The program has a long runway before it can get off the ground, Skidmore said. The college must plan courses, purchase a simulator and pass inspection by the FAA.

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Hillwood says it has created the largest speculative industrial pipeline in the firm’s history with the continued expansion of the 27,000-acre AllianceTexas development.

Ross Perot Jr.’s Hillwood revealed April 13 more details about its two latest spec industrial buildings. The firm started construction in March on the 268,623-square foot Alliance Gateway 70 and the 501,235-square-foot Alliance Gateway 71, located near Independence Parkway and Henrietta Creek Road near State Highway 170.

Construction on Alliance Gateway 70 is expected to be completed in the third quarter, followed by Alliance Gateway 71 in the fourth quarter. Dallas-based Hillwood did not disclose a price tag but October filings with the state indicated an estimated investment of about $35 million between both buildings.

The buildings were designed by RGA Architects. Civil engineering was handled by Westwood and Hillwood Construction Services is the general contractor. Alliance 70 is financed by Enterprise Bank and Alliance Gateway 71 is financed by Comerica Bank.

The two buildings give Hillwood an industrial pipeline of 3.1 million square feet under construction and another 2.6 million square feet in the pre-development phase. That is the largest the spec industrial pipeline has ever been at Alliance, the huge industrial and mixed-use hub centered around the nation’s first industrial airport. Alliance has generated more than $142 billion in economic impact for the region since 1990 and supports tens of thousands of jobs, according to a third-party study.

Other speculative buildings under construction there include Alliance Westport 12, Alliance Westport 15 and Alliance Gateway 34. Jack Barkley, vice president of industrial leasing at Hillwood, said in a statement that the new buildings represent an acceleration of the company’s “most ambitious speculative construction effort yet.”

“These buildings will allow us to deliver move-in-ready Class A facilities with the power capacity and infrastructure resilience required by next-generation industrial users,” he said. “Demand from leading logistics and manufacturing companies remains exceptionally strong, driven by the unmatched multi-modal transportation capabilities of AllianceTexas and the continued growth of the AllianceTexas labor pool.”

Building on spec refers to starting construction without a tenant already signed, which is common in industrial real estate as developers try to keep up with demand.

The huge pipeline underscores Hillwood’s confidence in the allure of Alliance. In recent years, the company has filled spec buildings with a variety of tenants. That includes Georgia-based Southwire’s 1.2 million-square-foot distribution center and Taylor Sheridan’s production studios. Taiwan-based company Wistron plans to build a factory to assemble supercomputers in partnership with Nvidia inside Alliance Westport 14, which was completed last July.

The new buildings will be near the AllianceTexas Smart Port, Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport and BNSF Alliance Intermodal Facility. The area is also home to a FedEx Ground hub, two UPS Ground Sort hubs, the FedEx Express Southwest Regional Air hub and the Amazon Air Regional Hub.

Alliance Gateway 70 will feature 60-foot loading bays, electric vehicle chargers and a 185-foot truck court, according to Hillwood’s announcement. The building will have 68 trailer parking spaces and 270 car parking spaces along with 2,500 square feet of office space.

Alliance 71 will have 60-foot loading bays, 105 dock doors and four drive-in ramps. The building will have 149 trailer parking spaces and 294 parking spaces along with a 2,500-square-foot main office space.

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott compared the state’s economy to a master planned community during a stop Tuesday at the Fort Worth Stockyards. Abbott participated in a fireside chat with Hillwood Chairman Ross Perot Jr. to cap off the fifth annual Forward Fort Worth summit.

Years of design, planning and execution have resulted in what some have dubbed the Texas economic miracle, Abbott said, while pushing back on that framing. “There’s no miracle behind what Texas has done,” he said. Perot Jr. echoed that sentiment. “This was a lot of hard work and vision by our governor and your team,” he said. Abbott recounted how Texas diversified its economy after years of relying on the oil and gas industry. Now Texas is leading in sectors like finance, technology and advanced manufacturing, which have made the state more resilient in the face of a possible recession, he said. Abbott repeatedly used tech entrepreneur Elon Musk as an example of the state’s business friendly culture. Musk recently announced plans to build a manufacturing plant near Austin to make sure his companies have the computer chips they need to operate rather than relying on manufacturing in Taiwan.

Abbott framed this move in the context of the supply chain shocks during the Covid-19 pandemic that revealed how much the United States relies on imports for basic medical supplies. “We want to make sure that we are self-sustaining in the state of Texas, where we are capable of manufacturing, creating and delivering every need that Texans and Americans need right here in the Lone Star State,” he said. Abbott also highlighted Texas’ growing finance sector with the Texas Stock Exchange, and efforts to expand the state’s ship building capacity. These efforts to diversify Texas’s economy will make it one of the most self-sustaining in the world, Abbott said. Despite these successes, Abbot said there is more work to do when it comes to property taxes and education. He repeated his plan to reduce property taxes by controlling local government spending and restricting the growth in home value appraisals. Abbott, who is running for a fourth term in office, also promised to eliminate school district property taxes by shifting the funding burden entirely to the state. He also highlighted the recently passed school voucher program, which the governor argued will improve education by introducing competitive market pressure to schools. Perot ended the chat by thanking the governor, and crediting his leadership for creating a model for how a state should be run.

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