Microsoft's $7 Billion AI Powerhouse: World's Most Powerful Data Center to Rise in Wisconsin

Microsoft is turning Foxconn's empty buildings into the 'world's most powerful' AI data center

Today Microsoft announced its plans to bring a Fairwater AI data center, which it claims is the "world's most powerful," online in early 2026. The $3.3 billion construction in Wisconsin is housed at the site of Foxconn' s failed LCD factory which was announced in 2017, but by the end of 2018 was already being called a "boondoggle." The new data center is massive at 1.2 million square feet spread over three buildings on 315 acres of land. Under those roofs are "hundreds of thousands" of Nvidia's GB200 GPUs, "connected by enough fiber to circle the Earth 4.5 times," according to Satya Nadella. Microsoft claims this cluster of interconnected GPUs is ten-times more powerful than the fastest super computer and will greatly accelerate its AI training efforts. The company says that multiple other Fairwater datacenters are under construction across the US. Microsoft is also touting its supposedly environmentally friendly design which minimizes water waste through a closed loop cooling system -- it only needs to be filled once and then it's sealed, eliminating evaporation. Microsoft's vice chair and president focused heavily on the company's sustainability efforts when announcing the project, which makes sense given AI's reputation for absolutely massive energy consumption.

Microsoft announces 'world's most powerful' AI data center -- 315-acre site to house 'hundreds of thousands' of Nvidia GPUs and enough fiber to circle the Earth 4.5 times

Microsoft is planning to bring the "world's most powerful" AI datacenter online in early 2026, the company announced today. The Pleasantville, Wisconsin-based datacenter, dubbed Fairwater, is. meant specifically for training AI models as well as running large-scale models. The datacenter will be housed on 315 acres of land, with 1.2 million square feet in three buildings to house "hundreds of thousands" of Nvidia GB200 and GB300 GPUs. On X, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote that these GPUs will be "connected by enough fiber to circle the Earth 4.5 times" and said that they will deliver ten times more performance than today's fastest supercomputer. This is likely a comparison to xAI's Colossus, which uses over 200,000 GPUs and 300 megawatts of power. Microsoft didn't specify its exact number of GPUs nor the expected power consumption. Fairwater uses closed-loop water cooling, which the company suggests will have "zero water waste," with all of the water supplied once, at construction. In fact, Microsoft says it's the second-largest water-cooled chiller plant on Earth. Hot water will be sent out to cooling fins on each side of Fairwater, and then cooled with 172 20-foot fans before being sent back in to cool the GPUs again. The other 10% will be traditional servers using outside air for cooling, and will move to water "only during the hottest days." In a separate blog post, Microsoft president Brad Smith wrote that the company is working to avoid driving up electricity costs for surrounding communities. The construction sounds immense. Executive vice president of Cloud and AI, Scott Guthrie, wrote that the new datacenter uses "46.6 miles of deep foundation piles, 26.5 million pounds of structural steel, 120 miles of medium-voltage underground cable and 72.6 miles of mechanical piping." The datacenter's storage systems alone are "five football fields" long. Beyond the Mount Pleasant facility, Guthrie adds that several identical Fairwater data centers are under construction elsewhere in the United States.

Microsoft touts mega-datacenter on old Foxconn site

Microsoft's CEO has claimed the operating system-slinger is building the "world's largest datacenter." In an X post on Thursday, Satya Nadella said that the datacenter Microsoft has built at Fairwater, Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, would be ten times faster than the world's largest supercomputer, have "hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GB200s," and enough fiber connections to encircle the world 4.5 times. That's about 35,550 miles (57,600 kilometers), based on the Earth's equatorial diameter. Mount Pleasant has had a checkered history with the tech industry. Once touted as a new innovation hyub, it has suffered multiple corporate letdowns from many national leaders, but on Wednesday Microsoft's president Brad Smith said it was time to bring investment back to his home by building datacenters. "As someone who spent almost five years as a kid going to school and delivering the morning newspaper by bicycle in Mount Pleasant, this moment means more than just personal nostalgia," Smith said in a blog post. "It shows that Wisconsin has not just a longstanding and proud industrial past - it's helping define the future of American innovation." Well, in a way. Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn planned to use much of the original Mount Pleasant plant as a high-tech campus, then an LCD production facility. In 2017 President Trump predicted it would be the "eighth wonder of the world" and the state's Republican governor Scott Walker coughed up $3 billion in subsidies to get the project started. Foxconn initially promised 30,000 jobs, then reduced that number to 13,000, and ultimately delivered just 281. Foxconn abandoned the project and Microsoft took over much of the land to build a $3.3 billion AI bit barn on the site. But Microsoft paused its expansion plans in January while Redmond said it would "evaluate scope and recent changes in technology." This led to Badger State locals wondering if they were going to get hosed again, but it appears Microsoft is going to make it happen. Smith said Microsoft has more than doubled down on its original plans for the site, by building a $4 billion second datacenter packed with Nvidia GPUs. Microsoft says around 3,000 workers could be employed to build the data processing buildings, which could need 800 full-time workers to keep them humming. Local residents may also benefit from better broadband thanks to the network infrastructure built to serve the sites. As for concerns that datacenters at this scale might strain local power and water resources, Smith assured residents that all will be well. Over 90 percent of the space will be chilled out by closed-loop liquid cooling, which massively cuts water needs to the equivalent of the yearly use of an American restaurant, Smith claimed. "Fairwater is supported by the second largest water-cooled chiller plant on the planet and will continuously circulate water in its closed loop cooling system," blogged Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's exec veep for Cloud and AI. "The hot water is then piped out to the cooling 'fins' on each side of the datacenter, where 172 20-foot fans chill and recirculate the water back." Such cooling systems consume a lot of energy. Not a problem, says Smith: Microsoft is currently building a 250 MW solar farm so that it can match every kilowatt hour it uses from fossil fuels with a matching quantity of renewable energy. Environmental groups are less impressed. According to campaigners at Clean Wisconsin, the Microsoft campus and the nearby Vantage datacenter in Port Washington will, in combination, consume enough energy to power 4.33 million homes, rather more than the state's 2.8 million dwellings. ®

Microsoft boosts Wisconsin data center spending to $7 billion

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Microsoft on Thursday said it plans to build a second massive artificial intelligence data center in Wisconsin, bringing its spending in the state to more than $7 billion. The new project will join a $3.3 billion data center in Mount Pleasant in the southeastern corner of the state, announced last year. Microsoft said Thursday that the initial data center remains on track to open next year and will employ about 500 people at its peak, expanding to about 800 once the second data center is complete. The area in Racine County, which sits nestled between Milwaukee and Chicago, has drawn the attention of U.S. presidents of both political parties in recent years. It was initially the site of a proposed $10 billion factory by electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn, which builds phones for Apple and others, during the first term of President Donald Trump, but those plans were drastically scaled back. At a Microsoft event last year, President Joe Biden, then running against Trump for a second time, highlighted Foxconn's pullback and Microsoft's decision to move forward with a data center. On Thursday, Microsoft said that the site would eventually house the world's most powerful AI supercomputer, connecting together hundreds of thousands of powerful chips from Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab. The company said that it plans to pre-pay for electrical infrastructure to avoid raising electricity rates in the region and that a state-of-the-art cooling system will tap into Wisconsin's cool climate and reduce the data center's yearly water use to that of an average restaurant. "This is where the next generation of AI will be trained, setting the stage for breakthroughs that will shape the future. New discoveries in medicine, science, and other critical fields will start right here, with the models we train in Wisconsin," Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a blog post. Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Sam Holmes Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Microsoft to spend $4 billion on second Wisconsin data center

RACINE, Wis. -- Microsoft said Thursday that it will spend $4 billion to build a second data center in Wisconsin. The first one will come online in early 2026, with the software company spending $3.3 billion on it. The first Wisconsin data center will house hundreds of thousands of Nvidia Blackwell GB200 chips that are capable of handling artificial intelligence models, Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and vice chair, said at a news conference. Cloud infrastructure providers are racing to build capacity to meet the needs of companies that want to run AI models. More than 700 million people use OpenAI's ChatGPT, which draws on Microsoft's Azure cloud, and software providers from Adobe to Salesforce have been adding AI feature enhancements to woo customers. Microsoft plans to match the amount of energy it consumes from fossil fuel sources with carbon-free energy it will contribute to the grid, Smith wrote in a blog post.

New Microsoft datacenter mimics 'one massive AI supercomputer'

Aerial view of Microsoft's new AI datacenter campus in Mt Pleasant, Wisconsin. Microsoft has announced a new wave of datacenters built specifically to power artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, including what it describes as its "largest and most sophisticated AI factory yet" in Wisconsin. The facility, named Fairwater, is the first of several identical datacenters under construction in the U.S. In addition to Wisconsin, Microsoft revealed plans for a hyperscale AI datacenter in Narvik, Norway, in partnership with nScale and Aker JV. In the U.K., it will work with nScale to build what it calls the country's largest supercomputer.

Microsoft to invest $4B to build second data center facility in Wisconsin - SiliconANGLE

Microsoft to invest $4B to build second data center facility in Wisconsin Microsoft Corp. has revealed plans to spend $4 billion building a second data center in Wisconsin, having already begun construction on an initial facility nearby that's set to cost around $3.3 billion. At a town hall meeting in Mount Pleasant, Microsoft President and Vice Chairman Brad Smith told residents that the company is planning to buy hundreds of thousands of Nvidia Corp.'s latest Blackwell GB200 graphics processing units to equip the first data center for artificial intelligence workloads. Smith, who spent part of his childhood in the town, reassured residents that they won't have to start paying more for their electricity bills because of the company's presence there. He explained that it will replace whatever fossil fuel-based energy it consumes from the grid with carbon-free renewable energy sources. "I just want you to know we are doing everything we can, and I believe we're succeeding in managing this issue well," he told attendees at the meeting. Microsoft has already secured some of its energy needs from a solar farm that's currently being built around 150 miles northwest of the new data centers, Smith said. It will provide around 250 megawatts of power annually, though the two data centers together will probably need more than 900 megawatts, so it will also need additional energy sources. Still, the data centers should be easier on the environment than the manufacturing plant that was originally slated to be built on the site of the first one. Earlier, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., also known as Foxconn, had revealed plans to construct an enormous factory at the site, which would have consumed around seven million gallons of water per day. The project was later canceled. According to Smith, Microsoft's first data center will use just 2.8 million gallons of water per year when it comes online in 2026, as its cooling systems can continuously recycle much of what they use. The second data center will use a similar amount, he added. The project will also create more jobs in the community, Smith said. The first data center will require around 500 full-time employees, and that number will grow to approximately 800 when the second one comes online. In addition, more than 3,000 construction workers were working on the first facility at the peak of its building phase. Microsoft and other cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon Web Services Inc., Google LLC and Oracle Corp. have been racing to build out their data center capacity, not only in the U.S. but also globally, due to the growing demands for AI models. OpenAI claims that ChatGPT alone has more than 700 million users worldwide, and it runs almost exclusively in Microsoft's Azure cloud data centers. Hundreds of other tech companies, such as Salesforce Inc., Adobe Inc., ServiceNow Inc. and Box Inc., have been adding generative AI features to their products too, and many of these draw on AI models powered by cloud providers. The Wisconsin data centers will help to fulfill that demand. In a post on X, Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said the first facility "will deliver 10x the performance of the world's fastest supercomputer today, enabling AI training and inference workloads at a level never before seen." The second data center is slated to come online in 2027 or later, and will be on a similar scale to the first, Smith said. "We did pause to think through exactly what we would build for phase two, and how we would build it," he added. Once the second facility is complete, the state will be home to more GPUs than any other, said Wisconsin's Democratic governor Tony Evers. Although the $7.3 billion invested in Wisconsin's new data centers is a substantial number, Microsoft is spending even more to build data centers in other locations around the world. Just this week, Smith revealed that the company has set aside $15.5 billion to spend on data center infrastructure in the U.K., and it has various other projects going in various parts of the world. Microsoft is also spending money to rent data center capacity from other operators. Last week, the company said it has committed to spending $19.4 billion on renting AI capacity from Amsterdam-based Nebius Group N.V.'s data centers, which are located throughout Europe.

Microsoft boosts Wisconsin data center spending to $7 billion - The Economic Times

Microsoft said the initial data center remains on track to open next year and will employ about 500 people at its peak, expanding to about 800 once the second data center is complete.Microsoft on Thursday said it plans to build a second massive artificial intelligence data center in Wisconsin, bringing its spending in the state to more than $7 billion. The new $4 billion project will join a $3.3 billion data center in Mount Pleasant in the southeastern corner of the state, announced last year. Microsoft said the initial data center remains on track to open next year and will employ about 500 people at its peak, expanding to about 800 once the second data center is complete. It said with the addition of the second large-scale data center, the site would eventually house the world's most powerful AI supercomputer, connecting together hundreds of thousands of powerful chips from Nvidia. The area in Racine County, which sits nestled between Milwaukee and Chicago, has drawn the attention of U.S. presidents of both political parties in recent years. It was initially the site of a proposed $10 billion factory by electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn, which builds phones for Apple and others, during the first term of President Donald Trump, but those plans were drastically scaled back. At Microsoft's unveiling of the first data center last year, US President Joe Biden, then running against Trump for a second time, highlighted Foxconn's pullback at the site. Microsoft said on Thursday that it plans to pre-pay for electrical infrastructure to avoid raising electricity rates in the region and that a state-of-the-art cooling system will tap into Wisconsin's cool climate and reduce the data center's yearly water use to that of an average restaurant. The company plans to build solar power in a different part of Wisconsin to offset its energy use at the data centers, but Microsoft President Brad Smith said the project will entail new fossil fuel power generation near the facilities. The driving factor was "what can be built in a particular area," Smith said in an interview. "This is (liquefied natural gas) territory." He said that the 800 permanent jobs the data centers create will be fewer than the thousands of jobs required to construct them but that there will still be jobs for skilled pipefitters and electricians. "All the things that we build need to be operated," Smith told Reuters. "It needs to be maintained. These are good jobs."

Microsoft Unveils 'World's Most Powerful AI Datacenter,' President Brad Smith Says

Inside 1.2 million square feet of floor space, Microsoft has joined thousands of interconnected Nvidia GB200s in a computing cluster capable of processing 865,000 tokens per second Microsoft said the most powerful AI data center in the world - with 337.6 megawatts of capacity - will soon be online in the fields of Racine County, Wisconsin. The facility, dubbed Fairwater, was announced in 2023 and heralded a massive win for locals after Apple supplier Foxconn had abandoned plans for a manufacturing facility at the site. Microsoft has spent the last three years, and $3.3 billion, to bring the facility online and said on Thursday it is nearly completed and will be ready to open in in early 2026. "In the heart of the American Midwest, a modern marvel is rising," Microsoft's vice chairman and president, Brad Smith, stated in a blog post Thursday. "We're in the final phases of building Fairwater, the world's most powerful AI datacenter in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin -- part of a region forged by generations of hard work and ingenuity." Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of cloud and AI for Microsoft, stated that what makes this facility so powerful is that it is running thousands of interconnected Nvidia GB200s in a computing cluster capable of processing 865,000 tokens per second, "the highest throughput of any cloud platform available today." "Each rack packs 72 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, tied together in a single NVLink domain that delivers 1.8 terabytes of GPU-to-GPU bandwidth and gives every GPU access to 14 terabytes of pooled memory," Guthrie wrote. "Rather than behaving like dozens of separate chips, the rack operates as a single, giant accelerator, capable of processing an astonishing 865,000 tokens per second, the highest throughput of any cloud platform available today." Guthrie called out some of the statistics involved in building the data center including 1.2 million square feet of floor space, 26.5 million pounds of structural steel, 120 miles of medium voltage underground piping, and 72.6 miles of mechanical piping. The Wisconsin data center is one of several that Microsoft is building including in Narvik, Norway, and Loughton, U.K. The Norway and UK AI datacenters will use similar designs to Fairwater and incorporate Nvidia's newer AI chip design, the GB300, which offers even more pooled memory per rack, he wrote. According to documents filed with Racine County, the Wisconsin data center is built on a 200-acre greenfield site inside a larger 315-acre plot of land. It's comprised of four buildings including a 545,620-square-foot, two-story conventional steel-framed structure with 194.4 megawatts of data halls. Another building will house 43.2 megawatts of data halls inside 293,420 square feet, and a third 263,170-square-foot building will contain the central utility plant, a structure that hosts a chiller room, pump room and other infrastructure. The fourth building is reserved for administration, the documents stated. Smith said the current facility will soon house "hundreds of thousands" of Nvidia GPUs connected "by enough fiber to wrap around the planet four times over." The horsepower is needed to handle training for "frontier AI models" and once it is operational, is expected to deliver "ten times the performance of today's fastest supercomputers." "This is where the next generation of AI will be trained, setting the stage for breakthroughs that will shape the future. New discoveries in medicine, science, and other critical fields will start right here, with the models we train in Wisconsin," said Smith, who added that he used to deliver newspapers by bicycle in Mount Pleasant, the town where the facility is located. The buildout of the data center employed 3,000 construction workers during peak activity and it will require a full-time workforce of 500 to keep it running. To offset the electricity used, Smith said Microsoft will match every kilowatt-hour it consumes from a fossil fuel source with carbon-free energy that it will return to the grid. As part of this project, Microsoft teamed with National Grid to build a new 250-megawatt solar project in Portage County that is under construction to support this commitment. Microsoft is also planning a second data center "of similar size and scale nearby," Smith wrote in his blog. "We're committing an additional $4 billion to be spent in the next three years to build our second datacenter of similar size and scale -- bringing our total investment in Wisconsin to more than $7 billion," said Smith.

Microsoft building world's most powerful AI datacenter in Wisconsin By Investing.com

Investing.com -- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced Thursday that the company is building what it calls the world's most powerful AI datacenter in southeastern Wisconsin. The facility, named Fairwater, will feature "a seamless cluster of hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA GB200s" connected by fiber optic cables that could circle the Earth 4.5 times, according to Nadella's post on X. Nadella stated that Fairwater will deliver 10 times the performance of today's fastest supercomputer, enabling unprecedented AI training and inference workloads. The datacenter will use a liquid-cooled closed-loop system for cooling GPUs that requires no water for operations after construction. Microsoft plans to match all energy consumed with renewable sources. Nadella emphasized that Fairwater is just one of several similar sites being developed across Microsoft's more than 70 regions. The company has multiple identical Fairwater datacenters under construction in other U.S. locations, adding to AI infrastructure already deployed in over 100 datacenters worldwide. The CEO highlighted Microsoft's rapid expansion of computing power, noting that the company added over 2 gigawatts of new capacity last year - "roughly the output of 2 nuclear power plants." Nadella said the project aims to create new jobs and expand opportunities while partnering with local communities to ensure sustainable development.

Microsoft boosts Wisconsin data center spending to $7 billion

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Microsoft on Thursday said it plans to build a second massive artificial intelligence data center in Wisconsin, bringing its spending in the state to more than $7 billion. The new $4 billion project will join a $3.3 billion data center in Mount Pleasant in the southeastern corner of the state, announced last year. Microsoft said the initial data center remains on track to open next year and will employ about 500 people at its peak, expanding to about 800 once the second data center is complete. It said with the addition of the second large-scale data center, the site would eventually house the world's most powerful AI supercomputer, connecting together hundreds of thousands of powerful chips from Nvidia. The area in Racine County, which sits nestled between Milwaukee and Chicago, has drawn the attention of U.S. presidents of both political parties in recent years. It was initially the site of a proposed $10 billion factory by electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn, which builds phones for Apple and others, during the first term of President Donald Trump, but those plans were drastically scaled back. At Microsoft's unveiling of the first data center last year, U.S. President Joe Biden, then running against Trump for a second time, highlighted Foxconn's pullback at the site. Microsoft said on Thursday that it plans to pre-pay for electrical infrastructure to avoid raising electricity rates in the region and that a state-of-the-art cooling system will tap into Wisconsin's cool climate and reduce the data center's yearly water use to that of an average restaurant. The company plans to build solar power in a different part of Wisconsin to offset its energy use at the data centers, but Microsoft President Brad Smith said the project will entail new fossil fuel power generation near the facilities. The driving factor was "what can be built in a particular area," Smith said in an interview. "This is (liquefied natural gas) territory." He said that the 800 permanent jobs the data centers create will be fewer than the thousands of jobs required to construct them but that there will still be jobs for skilled pipefitters and electricians. "All the things that we build need to be operated," Smith told Reuters. "It needs to be maintained. These are good jobs." (Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Sam Holmes)