(Reuters) -Amazon.com is planning to invest about $15 billion in Northern Indiana to build data center campuses, the tech giant said as it looks to boost its cloud computing capacity to support booming artificial intelligence demand.
The new data center project, which comes on top of an $11 billion outlay announced last year, will add 2.4 gigawatts of capacity in the region, Amazon said on Monday. It is also expected to create 1,100 jobs.
The e-commerce behemoth, which is also the largest cloud services provider in the world, has invested more than $31.3 billion in Indiana since 2010.
Tech companies like Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta are spending billions of dollars to develop AI infrastructure, even though the returns from the investments have been low.
Earlier in the day, Amazon also announced plans to invest up to $50 billion to expand AI and supercomputing capabilities for U.S. government customers of its cloud unit, Amazon Web Services.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on whether the two announcements had any overlap.
For the Indiana project, Amazon has struck an agreement with NIPSCO, one of Indiana’s top natural gas and electric companies, for the project.
The company has agreed to pay fees to use existing power and cover the costs for any new power needs for the data center project, without additional costs for local residents and businesses.
(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
