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Climate Cast ®
Paul Huttner and Matt Alvarez

Tech giants vie to build data centers in Minnesota to support their growing AI networks

Aerial view of a neighborhood that is next to a network of sprawling data center buildings.
In an aerial view, an Amazon Web Services data center is shown situated near single-family homes on July 17, 2024 in Stone Ridge, Virginia. Northern Virginia was the largest data center market in the world in 2024. The rapid growth of AI has tech companies looking to build similar centers in Minnesota.
Nathan Howard | Getty Images file photo

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Tech companies are looking to the land of 10,000 lakes as a suitable environment to expand their data footprint.

About 10 tech giants, such as Microsoft and Meta, are vying to build data centers in Minnesota to support their growing AI networks.

“The Midwest is kind of a big emerging market right now,” said Nick Halter, a Twin Cities reporter for Axios. “That's because we have abundant water, which oftentimes is used to cool these [centers] down, and also because we have much cooler temperatures.”

That’s because data centers in cooler climates require less energy to cool their facilities than those in warm Southern states.

Some tech companies are also targeting Minnesota because of the state’s renewable energy mandates, Halter said.

“The big question here is: How can we get to a place where we have 100 percent renewable energy in Minnesota, which is our goal, while the 10 proposed [data centers] would be the equivalent of the entire state's households’ electricity use?”

To hear the full conversation with Nick Halter and Paul Huttner, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.