Given its landlocked and rough terrain, Dallas — like Las Vegas — has sometimes been called a “city that shouldn’t exist.”
Still, for reasons similar to those that drove the growth spurt of its analogue in Nevada, the greater Dallas-Fort Worth region finds itself in the throes of its own population and employment boom.
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The steady emergence of high finance and big data is giving the regional economy ballast, even as the broader U.S. economy falters under the weight of slower growth and trade policy that have stoked fears of a recession.
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However, The Lone Star State’s business-friendly climate has helped make it the “headquarters of headquarters.”
With Dallas becoming what Christopher Kleinert, chief executive officer of Hunt Realty Investments, recently called an “epicenter for financial activity,” many Fortune 500 companies are planting down roots in the region, or adding to their Texas operations.
“If a company is willing to invest in bringing somebody here, they see that there’s opportunity. I don’t think that companies are making short-term decisions about relocating headquarters here,” said Janelle Bieler, head of tech talent solutions at Akkodis, a tech talent staffing company.
“So I do think that it’s something that will be sustainable.”
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Against that backdrop, North Texas is attracting many of Wall Street’s marquee brands, including Goldman Sachs, the New York Stock Exchange, Bank of New York and Nasdaq.
All of them are carving a toehold in the region, or expanding their footprint, as an incipient “Y’all Street” amplifies Dallas-Fort Worth’s metamorphosis into a global financial center, and a bigger draw for international capital.
“I think it’s been going like this for years,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in an April interview with a group of editors and reporters from The Dallas Morning News.
Construction continues at the Goldman Sachs’ NorthEnd campus at 2323 North Field Street in Dallas on Friday, May 2, 2025.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
In his spring shareholder letter, Wall Street’s longest-serving chief specifically called out Texas, and the bank’s contributions to the state.
He pronounced himself “very bullish” on Texas in general, with Dallas in particular serving as a key data hub for the bank, with over 5,000 technologists working in the area.
“What happens in any tech thing is, once it takes off, it takes off for good. So you can look at Silicon Valley, you can look at Boston,” Dimon said.
‘First innings of the game’
Meanwhile, The scaling of artificial intelligence is propelling massive development of data centers that are popping up all over the Lone Star State ― with the DFW area playing host to most of them.
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Among the more recent is Cognigy, an AI startup that announced in April it was relocating from San Francisco to Plano.
According to companies and staffing professionals, the tech migration is being driven by an abundance of highly skilled workers in the area, thanks in part to the presence of competitive colleges and universities, and transplants from other regions.
Those factors have created “a critical mass” that consists of a “self-sufficient, available pool of talent,” according to Fernando De Leon, CEO of Leon Capital.
“It feels like you can build, you can hire, you can retain talent, and you can do that without feeling like you’re going to be at a competitive disadvantage,” he said in a recent interview.
“The recruiters that work for us are looking for talent and the first place they look is Dallas. So you have this massive talent pool that reached a tipping point recently,” he adds.
The AI boom is a driving force behind the influx of technology-related jobs, according to Akkodis’ Bieler, adding that auto manufacturers and finance companies becoming more reliant on high-tech are also bolstering the labor market’s shift.
“We believe this to be the first innings of the game — the surge in demand is across technology companies and industrial companies,” said Rahul Mewawalla, CEO of Mawson Infrastructure Group, a digital infrastructure company.
Nvidia ― the kingpin of AI whose explosive stock appreciation has propelled its market capitalization above $4 trillion ― is putting some of that bounty to work right here in North Texas.
In April, the tech giant unveiled a $500 billion plan to build supercomputer infrastructure in the U.S., with Dallas and Houston being key sites in Texas.
In a statement hailing the move, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the state “will work with industry leaders from around the globe to accelerate production, ensure supply chain resilience, and lead the American resurgence in advanced manufacturing from Texas.”
Mewawalla, a former executive with Yahoo, General Electric, and Nokia, said that “a large number of companies want to be part of this AI transformation, and the real scarcity right now is the underlying infrastructure in terms of computer capacity at data centers to power all of this demand.
“Over the next several years, as an industry, we will have continued efforts such as Stargate and the 100 billion dollar AI infrastructure fund, to expand the foundational data centers that we need to meet the demand.”
A Google office building at the company’s Midlothian data center is seen, Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024, in Midlothian, Texas.
Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer
The “Rodeo Region”
The region has come a long way since the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.
The implosion of the industry — and its impact on Dallas — sowed the seeds of revival that eventually flourished into the current moment of regional economic expansion.
Eventually, the tumultuous aftermath of the S&L meltdown helped Dallas reinvent itself, giving way to an influx of financial and human capital that’s manifesting in the current moment.
Texas is at the epicenter of what Denver-based Bow River Capital calls a “Rodeo Region” — a dynamic cluster of states leading the nation in employment growth, particularly in renewable energy, semiconductors and data centers.
Owing to its light regulatory touch and business-friendly climate, the state is “the center of gravity in many ways” of the Rodeo Region, Rick Pederson, Bow River’s vice chairman and chief strategy officer, said in an interview.
Regulation-heavy coastal states like Delaware and California, meanwhile, have pushed businesses to leave in search of areas with less red tape, moves that have benefited the Lone Star State, Pederson added.
“Dallas and Texas are pulling [in businesses] but it’s being pushed, and much of that is coming from California,” Pederson explained. “And California we all know has high tax rates; both corporate tax, personal tax, sales tax, etc. And those are moving up. Government regulations are only increasing.”
Texas governor Greg Abbott is about to ring the bell for the closing of the NYSE at AT&T Stadium, along with AT&T CEO John Stankey (left), Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and NYSE President Lynn Martin (right), Wednesday, August 20, 2025 in Arlington. (Steve Nurenberg / Special Contributor)
Aside from a possible economic downturn, a few scenarios could emerge to derail D-FW’s growth. Longtime residents have bemoaned the area’s rising cost-of-living, particularly in home and rent prices.
In recent research, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas cited diminished affordability as something that erodes “one of Texas’ traditional advantages in attracting new workers to the state, and can cause economic disruption in vulnerable communities through the process of gentrification.”
According to Bow River’s Pederson, the federal government’s push to deport illegal immigrants — which comprise a significant share of Texas’ workforce — and a vulnerable energy grid are top concerns.
The explosion of data centers are driving a surge in demand that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas recently forecast will lead to a surge in power usage by 2030.
“That’s one thing, can you produce the electricity? But the other is, can you transmit it?” Pederson asked, citing grid reliability as “the number one” issue cited by some of his firm’s clients as a risk to Texas’ growth. “And so I worry about ERCOT.”
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.