Microsoft has confirmed it will invest an extra $4bn over the next three years at its complex in Fairwater, Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, creating what the company describes as the “world’s most powerful AI” data centre.
The investment brings Microsoft’s total spend on the project to $7.3bn. The original, $3.3bn AI data centre in Fairwater is due to become operational in early 2026.
Microsoft has given conflicting messages over its data centre plans.
The Mount Pleasant facility is designed to create and train AI models, housing hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs operating in clusters connected through enough fiber to cover the planet four times.
The models will be capable of training frontier AI models with ten times the performance of current supercomputers.
The company says the amount of water annually used on site will be the equivalent to a restaurant, with 90% of the facility running on a recirculated closed-loop liquid cooling system, filled during construction and the remaining 10% using outside air for cooling, only switching to water on hot days.
Microsoft claims that the facility will not increase energy costs for Wisconsin residents as it has prepaid for its energy and electrical infrastructure.
3,000 workers have been on site daily during peak construction, while the data centre will employ 800 people when both phases are complete.
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