CJF Investment Playbook 2025 (web)
Citation
California Jobs First (CJF), Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz). “The Playbook.” January 2025. PDF, 67 pages. https://jobsfirst.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/CJF-Investment-Playbook.pdf. Copy: raw/web/2026-11-10 CJF Investment Playbook 2025.md (original: .pdf beside it). Read 2026-11-10.
Bottom line
- The Playbook shows investors and funders the priorities of California’s 13 Jobs First regions, and it aligns them with the state’s Economic Blueprint.
- It gives $286 million in state funding to the regions to date. It tells regions to combine federal, state, private and philanthropic funds by “capital stacking”. “Artificial intelligence” is one of the state’s strategic sectors.
Background
California Jobs First is the state’s program for regional economic plans. It began in 2021 as the Community Economic Resilience Fund (CERF), now the Regional Investment Initiative (RII). This Playbook follows the State Economic Blueprint (California Jobs First Economic Blueprint). It has one section for each region, with its sectors, its coalition and its projects.
Key claims
- “California’s economic needs exceed what the state or regions alone can address. Funding California’s economic future will take a combination of federal, state, private, and philanthropic capital, underscoring the critical role of the Playbook.” (Executive Summary, p. 4)
- “The California Jobs First Council was established in 2024 to help achieve this goal, bringing together nine different state agencies to streamline economic, business and workforce development programs, and award state funding to Regional Collaboratives with a strategic view that aligns regional and state economic goals.” (Background, p. 6)
- “Total Funding To Date: $286M” (Background, p. 6)
- “Most recently, the state has allocated $120 million to help regions advance projects in their strategic sectors.” (Background, p. 6)
- “Capital stacking is a term used to describe layering different funding types and sources to finance projects.” (Capital Stacking, p. 26)
- “Yet, programs established through one-time funds carry the risk of disappearing when funding dries up, raising serious concerns about sustainability.” (Capital Stacking, p. 26)
- “Nvidia connects community colleges with AI resources and training materials.” (Uniting for Growth, p. 14)
- “Bay Area Jobs First represents over 650 institutions and 65,000 community members.” (Bay Area, p. 46)
Evidence and method
A state program document for investors and regional partners. It gives funding totals, sector lists, case studies and one profile for each region. The figures are the program’s own. The sector facts cite outside sources in endnotes.
Page 7 lists the counties of each region:
- North State: Butte, Glenn, Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Tehama, Trinity.
- Redwood: Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino.
- Capital: Colusa, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo, Yuba.
- Sierra: Alpine, Amador, Calaveras, Inyo, Mariposa, Mono, Tuolumne.
- Bay Area: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma.
- North San Joaquin: Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus.
- Central San Joaquin: Fresno, Kings, Madera, Tulare.
- Central Coast: Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Ventura.
- Kern County; Los Angeles County; Orange County.
- Inland SoCal: Riverside, San Bernardino.
- Southern Border: Imperial, San Diego.
Limits
The Playbook does not mention CalCompute or public compute. It names “Artificial intelligence” as a sector but gives no AI compute projects. The PDF has two-column pages, so the Markdown copy mixes the columns; read the original for the exact layout.
⚠️ Contradiction: this Playbook names a region “North San Joaquin” (p. 7). California Jobs First regions names it “Northern San Joaquin”.