Microsoft Buys More Land in Mount Pleasant For Data Center
Spending $33.9 million on additional land for $3.3 billion development on Foxconn land.
An artificial intelligence data center is built on land once slated for development by Foxconn in Mount Pleasant on Wednesday, May 8, 2024, in Mount Pleasant, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
Microsoft is buying up more land in the village of Mount Pleasant for its planned $3.3 billion AI data center development.
In the past week, the company purchased 173 acres in the village, spending $33.89 million on five separate tracts near the development site, according to property records from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.
All the newly purchased land is along Louis Sorenson Road near the main data center development site, according to a project overview. The purchases were recorded on July 24 and July 26, according to the property records.
Microsoft also purchased 32.1 acres at 12721 Louis Sorenson Road in May for $8.8 million.
An artificial intelligence data center is built on land once slated for development by Foxconn in Mount Pleasant on Wednesday, May 8, 2024, in Mount Pleasant, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
Local officials couldn’t be reached for comment Monday, but a spokesperson sent a joint statement from village, Racine County, the Milwaukee 7 Partnership and the Racine County Economic Development Corporation.
“We are pleased that Microsoft is increasing its land holdings north of Highway 11 in Mount Pleasant and Racine County,” the statement said. “Microsoft is a highly-valued corporate partner and we are grateful for the significant investments they are already making in our community. We celebrate this land acquisition as we look forward to many more years of partnership to come.”
In all, the company now owns over 1,200 acres in Racine County.
The purchases come nearly three months after Microsoft announced its intention to invest $3.3 billion on the data center project in the area once slated for development by Foxconn. The plans were revealed at an event in Mount Pleasant attended by President Joe Biden.
The project is an expansion of plans Microsoft announced last year to develop data centers in the area the village had set aside for Foxconn. The Foxconn project originally promised an investment of $9 billion and the creation of 13,000 jobs, but it never came to fruition.
The data center project is expected to bring over 2,000 union construction jobs to the area by the end of the year.
A drone photo taken on July 1, 2019 captures a single house on Prairie View Drive that remains in a former subdivision of 13 properties. Most property owners sold to the village of Mount Pleasant, Wis., and their homes have been demolished to make way for the Foxconn plant. A building on the Foxconn site and the Foxconn construction area are seen in the background. Coburn Dukehart/Wisconsin Watch
Ryan Harkins, the senior director of public policy for Microsoft, spoke about the project in May. He compared Mount Pleasant’s data center project to a similar development in West Des Moines, Iowa
“It’s a big facility that essentially aggregates lots and lots of computing power,” Harkins said.
“You need a lot of infrastructure in order to house the data that’s required to train the models and then also to bring to bear the computing power that is required to train the models,” he added.
Harkins said data center projects are housed in “warehouse size facilities.” He also said engineers and “other employees” will work at the location to manage and maintain the facility.
Microsoft buys more land in Mount Pleasant near data center development was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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Like crypto. AI uses alot of energy (and water). From a CNBC article, “Generative AI requires massive amounts of power and water, and the aging U.S. grid can’t handle the load”,
“There are more than 8,000 data centers globally, with the highest concentration in the U.S. And, thanks to AI, there will be far more by the end of the decade. Boston Consulting Group estimates demand for data centers will rise 15%-20% every year through 2030, when they’re expected to comprise 16% of total U.S. power consumption. That’s up from just 2.5% before OpenAI’s ChatGPT was released in 2022, and it’s equivalent to the power used by about two-thirds of the total homes in the U.S.”
“Generative AI data centers will also require 4.2 billion to 6.6 billion cubic meters of water withdrawal by 2027 to stay cool, according to Ren’s research. That’s more than the total annual water withdrawal of half of the U.K”.
This AI++ water hog is getting bigger.
PostTruthia could be a very dry place.
@Duane and @Marty Ellenbecker
Yes, it’s both shocking and woefully disappointing that no one in SE Wisconsin seems to be covering the enormous amounts of water and energy required to run data centers. Absolutely reflective of the state of “journalism” these days, coupled with seemingly everyone’s blithe acceptance that any “investment” in the region is good. Let me tell you, these companies know exactly what they are doing, and they will benefit most.
All this coupled with the fact that data centers, Uline and Amazon warehouses, and container manufacturing plants for German companies provide relatively few jobs, and those they do are mostly not the kind of highly-skilled workforce, management, and executive jobs we need.