In between plans to build a 400,000-person city and deep-water shipyard in rural Solano County, the team behind the controversial California Forever project has announced a third concept for the area: a 2,100-acre manufacturing plant called “Solano Foundry.”
Jan Sramek, CEO of California Forever, announced the project in an interview with tech writer and podcaster Ashlee Vance at the Reindustrialize conference Thursday in Detroit, as well as with a tweet in which he declared the return of “designed in California, made in California.”
A newly published website promises that the project will bring manufacturing back to California with a “40 million-square-foot ecosystem for the most innovative industries, including advanced transportation, robotics, energy, and defense.” It claims Solano Foundry would be the largest advanced manufacturing park in the U.S. and bring 40,000 jobs to the region.
“Silicon Valley earned its name because chips were once made here alongside code,” Sramek wrote. “By bringing R&D and manufacturing back together, Solano Foundry restores that magic, in a new home for frontier tech.”
California Forever emerged in 2023 with plans to build a 17,500-acre city in east Solano County, after secretively buying up property in the area for years under a different name. The project secured backing from major Silicon Valley figures, including Marc Andreessen, Laurene Powell-Jobs, and Michael Moritz, chairman of The Standard, but faced pushback from locals and raised serious concerns about its proximity to Travis Air Force Base and its environmental impacts.
The group has yet to break ground on the city, but that hasn’t stopped Sramek from proposing a host of other ideas for the land he purchased. In May, California Forever announced a plan to build a 1,400-acre shipbuilding operation near Collinsville, a town in northern Solano County. Solano Together, a group of residents skeptical of the development, called the plan “highly aspirational but lacking detail on how it could come to fruition.”
Solano Foundry would be located seven miles from the proposed shipyard, according to the newly released plans. California Forever says it has secured a partnership with commercial real estate company JLL, which recently launched an advanced manufacturing advising group, as the foundry’s “exclusive leasing agent” and has brought on former Postmates CEO Andreas Leiber to serve as general manager. (“I was getting tired of building software and wanted to build something that lasts a little bit longer,” Leiber quipped to local news outlet The Reporter.)
1/ It's time to bring back "designed in California, made in California.”
— Jan Sramek 🇺🇲 🌁 ⛰️ (@jansramek) July 17, 2025
Today, at @reindsummit, @ashleevance and I introduced Solano Foundry, the largest advanced manufacturing park in America, an hour north of Silicon Valley. Built by @CAForever with @JLL. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/0935yFjxzB
But Nate Huntington of Solano Together told The Standard much of the information contained in the foundry proposal isn’t new — it was part of California Forever’s initial pitch for a new city.
“They try to stay in the press every month or so and reignite some of the information that they provided around this to meet the moment,” he said. “With this project, it’s hard to navigate what is boosterism and hype and what is reality, and I think this is another example of that.”
Huntington noted that the land on which the foundry is planned is still zoned for agricultural use. “I was just looking at [Sramek’s] Twitter, and he represents it like, ‘We’re working on permitting,’” Huntington said. “It’s like, no, you haven’t even got the zoning yet.”
Other community members were more supportive. Fairfield City Council member Manveer Sandhu told KQED the development could keep residents from having to commute to Silicon Valley in order to find jobs. Chris Rico, head of the Solano Economic Development Corporation, told the outlet he too supports the project, though he wasn’t sure the county offices were properly staffed for such a large undertaking.
Andreessen, of venture capital firm A16z, also telegraphed his support, tweeting: “It is hard for me to put into words how excited I am about this. We @a16z are extremely proud to be associated with it.”
The development plans capitalize on pressure from President Donald Trump to bring more manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., as well as the burgeoning “abundance” movement, which promotes deregulation in order to speed development. Entrepreneurs have seized on the building frenzy to propose other new developments in Northern California, such as Frontier Valley, a “special regulation zone” in Alameda that has yet to receive the approval of either the city or the federal government.
California Forever has hit a series of roadblocks in its ambitious plan to build an economic hub in Solano County, not the least of which is suspicion from locals. Last year, California Forever pulled a ballot initiative that would have let residents vote to approve the project. (“We probably went too far in the direction of optimizing for the speed,” Sramek conceded to Politico.) The group is now considering letting the Solano County town of Suisun City annex much of its land and oversee its development.
The setbacks seem not to have gotten to Sramek, who was enthusiastically retweeting support for the project Thursday. “Imagine snagging a coffee from your local spot on your morning walk to your high-paying advanced manufacturing job,” wrote one poster with the handle @YIMBYLAND. “This is the new American Dream.”