Apple spending $161 million to build a theater at new headquarters

How much will Apple pay to have complete control of their event venues? A lot, apparently.

The world’s most valuable company will spend $160,999,985.00 to construct a “theatre” at its new headquarters in Cupertino, according to building permits on file with the city. And they’ve hired BNBT Builders, Inc to do the work.

At BuildZoom, we’ve developed technology to automatically collect and analyze building permits filed as public records across America. Not surprisingly, our system picked up on the huge amounts of money Apple is spending on their new spaceship-like headquarters.

Given how important Apple’s announcements have become in their product launches, and how large their global audience has become, it’s not surprising that Apple would invest this kind of money in an events center. The company is generating cash on a scale never seen before in the history of the technology business. Our guess is that the new venue will create an even more magical atmosphere. An in-house facility should allow Apple to more tightly control the experience and make it easier for their speakers to rehearse, among other benefits. Meanwhile, it will be easier to avoid mishaps such as the streaming fiasco that occurred at the iPhone 6 announcement.

Here is the official building permit filing:

Apple is also building a $71 million gym for their new headquarters, and they’ve filed a total of 34 separate permits for the property at 19111 Pruneridge Ave in Cupertino just since February 2014. We’ve posted all those building permits, as we do for every property in our database, on the BuildZoom profile for the address at https://www.buildzoom.com/property-info/19111-pruneridge-ave-cupertino-ca-95014.