Top cloud storage and hosting giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) has pledged $11 billion towards the construction of several new datacenters in the US Midwest, in what the company is calling ‘the largest capital investment in the state’s history’.
In a press releaseannouncing the move, AWS said the deal is set to include $7 million worth of funding for community projects in and around St Joseph County, outside South Bend, Indiana - already an established base for Amazon’s cloud division, which has 26,000 employees in the state.
The extent of the work is as yet unclear, but, as The Register points out, hyperscale data centers typically cost in the region of $1 billion, suggesting that AWS’s operation is about to see considerable expansion.
AWS Indiana investment
Yes, it’s likely that Amazon are planning on integrating some form of AI into its data centers, with CEO Andy Jassy discussing the generative AI capabilities of its AWS’ Trainum2 chips at length in his letter to shareholders earlier in April 2024. But when everyone’s at it, that’s not interesting.
What interested (and pleasantly surprised) us is the extent of Amazon’s community investment in the area. Beyond simple things like renovating roads and bringing STEAM programmes to schools in the area, it also plans to bring its Fiber Optic Fusion Splicing Workshop, which trains students to install fibre cabling and connects them with local employees, to the area.
It also plans to start an ‘Information Infrastructure Workshop’ which, it claims ‘is designed to help students, educators and workforce leaders better understand the physical layer of cloud computing and our information economy’.
On its own, this could be seen as PR bluster, but Indiana’s Governor, Eric Holcomb, seems optimistic about Amazon’s role in developing the economy of, *checks notes*, ‘the Hoosier state’.
“Amazon has long been an important economic partner in Indiana, and we are excited to welcome AWS,” he said.
“This significant investment solidifies Indiana’s leadership position in the economy of the future, and will undoubtedly have a positive ripple effect on the town of New Carlisle, the north central region and the state of Indiana for years to come.”
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