Hitachi plans for a hiring spree in the US as big tech businesses slash jobs across the nation

The large-scale tech layoffs we have been seeing since the latter half of 2022 are finally giving foreign investors the chance they were looking for to step into the US economy. The Japanese company Hitachi says that it is eyeing “a big opportunity.” Hitachi is not only planning a mere hiring spree in the US. The industrial conglomerate is looking for acquisitions in Silicon Valley and more.

The chief executive Keiji Kojima of Hitachi gave an interview for Financial Times where he explained how the extreme cost-cutting measures of American tech businesses such as Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and many other big tech businesses over the past year would be helpful for their business. Hitachi will go on a multibillion-dollar hiring spree on US soil to expand its digital services.

According to Kojima, they will hire good talent from among the tech workers who were laid off during the layoffs. Hitachi will be very selective with their hiring process because the salaries of the tech talent who were laid off by giant tech firms were generally high. This is a big opportunity for Hitachi to attract good talent in a tight job market.

Hitachi is also actively looking for new acquisition targets in cloud services in America. This is following their purchase of GlobalLogic, the Silicon Valley software engineering company, for $9.5 billion in 2021. The company has allocated ¥500 billion ($3.7 billion) to invest in the digital strategy of the business for three years through March 2025. Hitachi will hire 30,000 workers to perform these roles. Already, around 1,000 people are hired per month by GlobalLogic in eastern Europe and Latin America. The company has even acquired two firms in Romania and Uruguay.

For more than a decade, the Japanese conglomerate morphed into an IT and infrastructure specialist. In this journey, the company had to sell and merge 22 of its subsidiaries, among which some were of great value to the business. The cash Hitachi raised from offloading non-core businesses was employed to purchase GlobalLogic and for the expansion of Lumada, its software business. Hitachi even bought a nearly 80% stake for $6.4 billion in ABB’s power grid business back in 2020. Hitachi later fully acquired the company.

Kojima says that Hitachi will make investments to grow organically from here onward and use mergers and acquisitions to accelerate the growth. The business will also be conducting share buybacks. In one of its latest divestitures, the group planned to sell a stake in Hitachi Astemo to a global private equity fund. This business was created via a merger of car parts subsidiaries at Hitachi and Honda.