Amazon is to invest over US$5bn (£3.8bn) developing a second ‘headquarters city’ somewhere in North America.

It is inviting to cities to put themselves forward as the location for ‘HQ2’, which is intended to be a full equal to Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle.

The new site expected to grow to have 50,000 employees. In the meantime, the company said that HQ2 is expected to create tens of thousands of jobs in construction and related industries.

Amazon is opening a request for proposals targeted at local and state government leaders interested in bringing Amazon to their area.

“We expect HQ2 to be a full equal to our Seattle headquarters,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “Amazon HQ2 will bring billions of dollars in up-front and ongoing investments, and tens of thousands of high-paying jobs. We’re excited to find a second home.”

In choosing the location for HQ2, Amazon has a preference for metropolitan areas of more than one million people offering a stable and business-friendly environment.

The company said that HQ2 could be – but does not have to be – an urban or downtown campus, a similar layout to Amazon’s Seattle campus, a development-prepped site.

The existing Seattle HQ has 33 buildings with a total area of 8.1 million square feet. It imploys more than 40,000 people.

Amazon HQ2 is to be a complete headquarters for Amazon, rather than a satellite office. Amazon expects to hire new teams and executives in HQ2, and will also let existing senior leaders across the company decide whether to locate their teams in HQ1, HQ2 or both. The company expects that employees who are currently working in HQ1 can choose to continue working there, or they could have an opportunity to move if they would prefer to be located in HQ2.