News & Press Releases

Rural Sourcing doesn’t want to be in hot spots like Austin, Texas, or Silicon Valley. It looks for less expensive places, where workers cost less and the lower cost of living affords a better quality of life.

Local business recruiters made their pitch, and now Rural Sourcing is opening a location here that will grow to 150 jobs within three years.

A key advantage Buffalo enjoys is that hydropower from Niagara Falls provides an energy surplus today. This has attracted, among other startups, a $298M hydrogen production facility, Plug Power, that will rely on hydropower to refine its hydrogen fuel. In addition, the city has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 36% compared to 2005 levels and is working to meet the 50% target set by the Paris Accord by 2030.

The Western New York Advanced Manufacturing Cluster was selected as a finalist for the Biden administration’s “Build Back Better Challenge,” an effort to deliver massive infusions of federal stimulus money to bolster local economies across the country.

“This is going to be great news for Western New York,” Schumer said in an interview Sunday. “It’s a giant step forward into making us one of the tech hubs.”

Natascha Thomas has been named director of the company’s “Buffalo Development Center,” charged with building out a software development hub. Buffalo was chosen earlier this year to be among 10 hubs across the U.S. after Rural Sourcing’s internal site search identified Western New York. Invest Buffalo Niagara worked with the company to secure their arrival.

“We hope the Canadians miss us,” Mr. Kucharski said. “We certainly miss them.”

When you think of Buffalo, N.Y., things that come to mind could include lost Super Bowls, snow and, of course, chicken wings. But the real news coming out of Buffalo is renewable energy. For more than a century, the Western New York city has been a leader in clean energy.

In some ways, it was a standard visit for a company considering the region for a site location, Hubacher said. But because the Rural Sourcing team came in with a clearly defined set of priorities, they were treated to a customized itinerary that could become a template going forward.

Plug Power has begun construction on a state-of-the-art green hydrogen manufacturing facility at the Western New York Science, Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park (STAMP) in Genesee County. New York Governor Kathy Hochul joined local government leaders to break ground on the project, which will also include a 450-megawatt electricity substation to support the hydrogen projection facility and future growth projects at STAMP.