AWS Announces $10 Billion Investment in North Carolina Data Centers, Set to Transform Richmond County

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a $10 billion investment in developing data centers in North Carolina, specifically in Richmond County, east of Charlotte and south of Greensboro. This significant investment is expected to transform the region by adding substantial data processing capabilities and creating around 500 permanent jobs, along with numerous construction positions during the building phase. The ambitious project involves an 800-acre plot in the Energy Way Industrial Park, situated near Duke Energy’s Smith Energy Complex, which generates 2.2 gigawatts of power. The industrial park has the capacity for 20 buildings, each ranging from 200,000 to 225,000 square feet, totaling roughly 8.5 million square feet of data center space. This marks AWS's first major data center project in North Carolina, although Amazon has already invested over $12 billion in the state for retail distribution centers, employing 24,000 part-time and full-time workers. Unlike retail operations, data centers require minimal staff once operational, primarily due to their automated nature and the increasing presence of robotics and AI for maintenance and monitoring. The chosen site in Richmond County benefits from abundant resources crucial for data center operations—space, electricity, and water. Historically, textiles and furniture manufacturing industries thrived in this area due to similar resource requirements, leaving behind a robust infrastructure that makes it an ideal location for tech companies. Notably, other major tech players like Google, Apple, and Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) have established data centers nearby, contributing to the region's growing reputation as a tech hub. Google's data center in Lenoir, operational since 2007, expanded significantly with a $1.2 billion investment and may see another $600 million expansion soon. Apple's first data center, built in Maiden in 2009, required a $1 billion investment. Meta Platforms’ innovative data center in Forest City, also operational since 2012, covers 1.3 million square feet and has seen cumulative investments of around $750 million. Despite Microsoft’s recent decision to pause its own $1 billion investment in data centers along the Route 321 corridor, AWS's commitment stands firm, promising to bring substantial economic benefits to the area. The potential for AI computing within the new AWS data centers is significant. Based on rough estimates, the four-year cost of building and operating a data center and equipping it with AI hardware splits equally between facilities (power and cooling) and computation equipment. Thus, a $10 billion investment could translate into $5 billion worth of AI hardware. With current pricing for Nvidia's Blackwell B200 nodes, this equates to about 106,800 GPUs, capable of delivering 480.6 exaflops of FP8 precision for dense matrix operations, doubling with sparse matrices. Alternatively, using AWS's own Trainium2 chips, which are roughly one-third the price of Nvidia's GPUs, the same investment could buy 330,000 Trainium2 chips, yielding 428.7 exaflops at FP8 precision for dense matrices. The cost efficiency of Trainium2 makes it a compelling option for high-performance computing tasks. Industry insiders predict that AWS’s Richmond County data centers will play a crucial role in supporting Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude models, which AWS has invested $8 billion in. The compatibility of Trainium chips with AI workloads suggests they will be a cornerstone of the facility's computational capabilities. This investment not only highlights AWS's strategic focus on AI but also underscores its commitment to expanding its global data center footprint, thereby enhancing its cloud services and infrastructure. AWS's move into Richmond County signals a broader trend of hyperscale data center development in regions with favorable conditions for operation. The company's presence is expected to attract additional tech investments, stimulate local employment, and bolster the regional economy, making North Carolina an even more attractive location for tech companies seeking to establish a strong cloud computing presence. In summary, AWS's $10 billion investment in North Carolina represents a strategic and substantial commitment to expanding its cloud infrastructure. The project is poised to create significant economic opportunities, enhance local tech ecosystems, and support advanced AI computing, particularly for Anthropic. AWS, a leader in cloud computing, continues to invest heavily in strategic locations, underscoring its ongoing commitment to innovation and market leadership.