Well, we now have a good idea of what Amazon Web Services (AWS) is planning to do with the roughly 400 acres it recently bought in Ohio. The company this week unveiled plans to drop a cool $7.8 billion to expand its data center operations in the state by 2030.
“This enormous capital investment further solidifies Ohio as the tech center of the Midwest and positions us for a bright future as cloud computing and artificial intelligence are more integrated into the economy and our everyday lives,” Ohio’s Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted said in a statement.
According to JobsOhio, the state’s private economic development corporation, Amazon’s investment is the second largest from a single private sector company in Ohio’s history. The organization indicated “numerous localities in central Ohio” are under consideration for new data center campus sites, with final selections set to be made at an unspecified “later date.”
The land AWS recently acquired in Ohio is in New Albany, a town located to the northeast of the city of Columbus, which sits in the center of the state. Amazon has not confirmed how exactly it plans to use the land but given today’s announcement we would hazard a guess that at least one of the two plots will end up with a data center on it.
Silverlinings previously identified New Albany as an emerging data center hub. In addition to Amazon, the municipality has drawn interest from Google and Facebook as well.
In terms of AWS’ future impact on the state, JobsOhio CEO J.P. Nauseef said in a statement the data center expansion is expected to create 230 direct new jobs and an estimated 1,000 support jobs.
The new investment will build on the $6.3 billion AWS said it has spent in Ohio since 2015. The company launched its first data center there in October 2016 and now has three availability zones in Ohio.
In addition to the governor's office and JobsOhio, AWS also has support for its development efforts from the Ohio Business Roundtable. Patrick Tiberi, the group's CEO, noted during AWS' public sector summit in Washington, DC earlier this month that communities in the state are actively trying to woo data center builders to help keep taxes low for residents.