Microsoft’s $3.3 billion investment to build an artificial intelligence data center campus in Mount Pleasant is being touted by economic development officials and business leaders as a watershed moment for Wisconsin. The investment, to be made now though the end of 2026, was announced in May, along with several corresponding community partnerships involving the Redmond,
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Brad Smith[/caption]
The complex is being built on land where Foxconn had planned to build a massive LCD screen manufacturing complex. Originally touted as a $10 billion project that would create 13,000 jobs, Foxconn’s development in Mount Pleasant has been far short of those plans and much of the land where it had planned to build remains vacant.
While state leaders have initially focused on the financial investment from Microsoft – as well as the potential job numbers – the impact the data center could have on Mount Pleasant and the greater southeastern Wisconsin region could be even farther reaching.
In addition to its financial investment, Microsoft will help upskill businesses and workers throughout southeastern Wisconsin. Through a partnership with Green Bay-based venture capital firm TitletownTech and the Green Bay Packers, Microsoft is building a manufacturing-focused AI Co-Innovation Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The lab is the first of its kind in the United States, according to Evers.
Microsoft also forged partnerships with Madison-based startup accelerator gener8tor and Gateway Technical College, both aimed at upskilling the state’s workforce. The company hopes to train more than 100,000 Wisconsinites in artificial intelligence by 2030.
“This isn’t just about building a building, and it’s not just about the manufacturing jobs of today,” said Smith. “More than anything, this project is about using the future of AI to fuel the future of manufacturing companies and jobs and skills across the state of Wisconsin and around the country.”
Renderings of the new Microsoft Data Center[/caption]
Microsoft data centers also contain a “circular center,” where decommissioned servers and hardware components are processed to be recycled.
High-efficiency evaporative cooling air handlers are placed throughout the data center campus, allowing the facility to use the energy it needs while reducing its environmental impact.
The company is constantly looking to innovate and implement new data center technologies. It has twice in recent years lowered a data center to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to gauge the feasibility and practicality of underwater operations.
Historically, high-tech data centers that focus specifically on the cloud and AI – like the one under construction in Mount Pleasant – have been built on the coasts, in proximity to the nation’s major tech companies. But that doesn’t mean Wisconsin is new to the fast-growing data center market.
Milwaukee-based Potawatomi Ventures, formerly known as the Potawatomi Business Development Corp., broke into the data center market more than a decade ago when it launched a subsidiary known as Data Holdings, which operates a 50,000-square-foot data center on West Highland Boulevard on the west side of Milwaukee.
“We’re only less than a millisecond away from Chicago, (via) open fiber. Wisconsin has always been a legitimate place to put data centers and be very well connected to the internet, but it’s taken a long time for people to realize that,” said Ryan Brooks, general manager of Milwaukee-based Data Holdings.
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Ryan Brooks[/caption]
Construction of a data center involves the inclusion of several redundancies, like backup generators and battery power systems, in case power is lost.
“It has to be able to survive anything that you can think of,” said Brooks. “In our world, if something can happen, it’s just a matter of time. It’s the data center version of Murphy’s Law.”
Wisconsin’s cooler climate is a benefit to data center operators. During the winter months, companies can take advantage of lower energy costs since they don’t need as much power to cool equipment. That could be of particular interest to Microsoft as the operator of an AI-focused data center that will require substantially more energy than traditional data centers facilities.
Brooks estimates that a typical sever cabinet, which at Data Holdings’ Highland Boulevard facility can hold up to 42 servers, uses the same amount of power as a single household. Meanwhile, a server rack being used for an AI application uses the same amount of power as 30 households.
“Adding the electrical power and then just getting the (AI) chips themselves? Very difficult,” said Brooks. “Everyone wants them. It’s like a gold rush.”
A particularly exciting component of the Mount Pleasant project is the involvement of local vendors who are all needed to build the campus, he said. Vendors who make products like electrical and switch gears are all critical to the construction process. Brooks is also hopeful that Microsoft’s expanded presence in the region will help retain technical talent, a challenge that companies like Data Holdings have been struggling to address.
He said it has been “very disappointing” to see well-trained technical workers leave Wisconsin to work on the coasts for giants like Microsoft.
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Dan Krueger[/caption]
We Energies’ peak demand is 5,000 megawatts (5 million kilowatts or 5 billion watts). Combined with Green Bay-based Wisconsin Public Services’ peak demand in northeastern and north central Wisconsin, that total can jump to a high of 8,000 megawatts.
The peak is the most energy being used at any given time. Adding up the different levels underneath the peak is called the load, or all the megawatt hours that are used at any given interval of time, with the cap being 8,000 megawatts.
Increased demand for energy, thanks to Microsoft, could raise concerns of increased energy rates, but Krueger doesn’t expect Microsoft’s energy usage to have an impact on rates for other customers or on how accessible power is throughout the region.
“I have never encountered a customer, ever, more committed to making sure their presence has positive impact,” said Krueger of Microsoft. “They don’t wish for anyone to pay anything due to their presence.”
It’s still unclear what kind of additional infrastructure support might be needed as more phases of the Mount Pleasant data center are completed. We Energies will be closely watching to see if the data center spurs additional development that could further increase the demand for energy, what Krueger refers to as a “shimmer effect.”
“If we observe an escalating level of demand and load because we suspect more people are engaging servers for AI, then we’ll begin to react,” said Krueger.
Russ Trimble[/caption]
“We had a long courtship, if you will,” Trimble said of Microsoft. “We were competing against other places in Iowa as well as other places around the nation.”
Learning Microsoft was considering West Des Moines as a data center site was “literally a game changer,” he said. Not only would the city get to drastically expand its tax base, but it would also get hundreds of jobs. Microsoft is currently the largest taxpayer in West Des Moines.
Most of Microsoft’s data centers in West Des Moines have been built out in six phases, with each phase including construction of a new building. Each phase, or building, of each data center project has a taxable valuation of approximately $250 million, according to Trimble.
“(These projects) opened up thousands of acres for development in other parts of the city that otherwise, the city taxpayers would have had to pay for. I’m not sure how we would have been able to do that,” he said.
West Des Moines’ data centers have such a high taxable valuation that the debt service levies the city has applied for have allowed for smaller school districts to be able to remodel or build entirely new school buildings, Trimble said.
Along with an expanded tax base, West Des Moines’ data centers have created 400 new jobs so far. Construction work on each new data center has been continuous, providing the community with hundreds of additional jobs.
“These data centers have just gone on and on,” said Trimble. “For other projects in town, it’s difficult for people to find electricians and plumbers.”
He explained that skilled laborers, often with backgrounds in computer science and technology, are also needed to keep the buildings up and running. Having Microsoft in West Des Moines has helped attract the outside talent needed to keep up with each data center’s operations.
“I think having (Microsoft) here, it’s helped to diversify our economy and provide high-quality jobs in the tech industry,” said Trimble. “It says to the young people, ‘We are a progressive city with great jobs; come live in the city of West Des Moines.’”
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Construction is underway on Microsoft’s data center in Mount Pleasant. These photos show the progress on the site as of May.
Joe Hamann[/caption]
Microsoft has six existing Co-Innovation Labs around the world, in Redmond, Washington; San Francisco, California; Munich, Germany; Shanghai, China; Kobe, Japan; and Montevideo, Uruguay. Its newest lab in Milwaukee will be the first dedicated to the manufacturing industry – and the first located on a university campus.
With plans to host 60-plus unique industry visits each year, the lab will help businesses with everything from early-stage testing and design evaluation that can be done in a single day, to more focused programs that could last between three to six weeks. This will be Microsoft’s first Co-Innovation Lab dedicated to the manufacturing industry.
“We’re not just using technology for technology’s sake,” said Hamann. “We’re using it to address known business problems.”
Microsoft’s plan for the new AI Co-Innovation Lab also builds on an existing partnership the organization has with the Green Bay Packers and TitletownTech, which will open its first Milwaukee branch within the AI Co-Innovation Lab space.
The venture capital firm will have two people working in the AI Co-Innovation Lab, serving as an extension of the team in Green Bay. Microsoft will dedicate three full-time and two part-time employees to the space.
“If you’re an early-stage entrepreneur, you’re going to want to be at the center of gravity,” said Craig Dickman, managing director at TitletownTech. “I think that’s really been created by this unique partnership.”
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Craig Dickman[/caption]
Through the coming years of investment and upskilling efforts focused on AI, Microsoft aims to create a “data center economy” in southeastern Wisconsin. That data center economy will not only train the workers needed to keep the Mount Pleasant data center running, but also elevate the region’s profile as a tech hub.
“This project is about using the power of AI to fuel the future of manufacturing companies, jobs and skills across the state of Wisconsin,” said Smith. “That is what we’re building together.”