Amazon to invest $1B into data center communities amid backlash against data center rollouts

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon is investing more than $1 billion over the next five years into communities where it operates data centers for education, job training, water and energy preservation projects and other local priorities as it reacts to a growing backlash from politicians and consumers to the tech industry’s rollout of the massive buildings.

According to a blog post on Friday by Matt Garman, Amazon’s CEO of its cloud computing arm, Amazon has already spent more than $1 billion in communities with a large data center presence over the past three years.

Garman also said that Amazon is no longer using nondisclosure agreements with government agencies it works with on its projects, and it said it hosts open houses in communities where it operates to share information about what it’s doing. He also warned against the spread of what he believes is misinformation about data centers’ impact on the environment and energy rates — and he cited the dangers of over 100 moratoriums against these centers being considered across the country.

“If these measures are enacted, the U.S. could be writing its own losing ticket to this race, and the consequences would last generations,” he wrote. “As a country, we can’t afford to find ourselves in that position. There is urgency to this data center build out because we aren’t the only country that sees the benefits of AI for the economy and national security.”

Garman’s pledge comes as data centers, which power artificial intelligence and cloud computing, have become a hot political issue heading into the midterms as tech giants race to invest more money in expanding these infrastructures. 

Small, under-the-radar data centers have been around for decades. But the explosion of artificial intelligence chatbots has resulted in data centers that are bigger than anything just about any town has ever seen. Some of them dwarf football stadiums and factories and consume more energy than small cities.

By 2030, data centers will account for nearly 3% of the world’s projected electricity use, with 935 trillion watt-hours, according to a United Nations University report released in June on these buildings’ environmental footprint.

Amazon said in July that it now expects to spend $220 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, including on data centers and other technology investments. That’s up from its prior estimate of $200 billion.

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President Donald Trump has embraced the building of more data centers, but there is growing wariness from voters. About 6 in 10 Americans support limiting the number of new data centers that can be built, including most Democrats and Republicans.

And a majority of Americans are “extremely” or “very” concerned about the impact of data centers on electricity prices or the water supply in the communities where they are built.