Microsoft announced it plans to invest another $4 billion in its datacenter in Mount Pleasant by the end of 2028.
The new investment comes after Microsoft announced last May it would be investing $3.3 billion by the end of 2026. The new investment, announced Thursday morning, will go toward building a new facility on the same site, previously owned by Foxconn, as part of Microsoft’s distributed training supercomputer for the company’s artificial intelligence services.
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith in a statement touted the news as “a promise to grow responsibly, invest deeply, and create opportunities for Wisconsin and for the nation.”
“We’re in the final phases of building the world’s most powerful AI datacenter in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin—part of a region forged by generations of hard work and ingenuity,” Smith said. “This facility is more than a technological feat.”
Smith also said the company is on track to complete its $3.3 billion portion of the project and bring the AI datacenter early next year.
He added the new, larger investment “will house hundreds of thousands of the world’s most powerful NVIDIA GPUs, operating in seamless clusters connected by enough fiber to wrap the planet four times over.”
Smith also worked to address some concerns about the environmental impacts of such large-scale datacenter projects.
“More than 90 percent of the facility will rely on a state-of-the-art closed-loop liquid cooling system, filled during construction and recirculated continuously,” he said. “The remaining portion of the facility will use outside air for cooling, switching to water only on the hottest days, minimizing environmental impact and maximizing operational efficiency.”
That’s a change from the total-loss style of water cooling datacenters of the past used, where water goes into the facility to cool the system and then gets dumped right back out. The closed-loop system works much the same way a car’s radiator cooling system does.
Smith also said Microsoft is “pre-paying for the energy and electrical infrastructure that we’ll use.”
He argued the move will ensure utility prices will remain stable and protect consumers from increases because of the datacenter.
As for the environmental impact of the center’s increased electricity consumption, Smith said Microsoft will match every kilowatt hour it consumes at the new facility from fossil fuels with carbon-free energy.
“This includes a new 250 MW solar project in Portage County that is under construction to support this commitment,” he said. “And our partnership with WE Energies ensures we will continually explore and add energy transmission, generation, and usage — under transparent tariffs that support grid reliability.”
Gov. Tony Evers praised the investment as one that puts Wisconsin “on the very cutting edge of AI power, not just in the U.S., but throughout the world, while creating good, family-supporting jobs, growing our communities and bolstering our critical biohealth, personalized medicine, and advanced manufacturing sectors here at home.”
“Throughout our history, innovation has been the key to Wisconsin’s success, championing ideas of discoveries that have transformed people’s lives the world over, and this announcement is no different,” Evers said.
See Microsoft’s release.
See Evers’ release.
