Marina Lubimova
Amazon Web Services (AWS) plans to invest approximately $35 billion in a new data center campus covering around 1,000 acres. The company has also committed more than $7 million toward community support initiatives.
Just months later, Google announced plans to build a neighboring data center campus valued at $15 billion on more than 900 acres. Together, the projects represent roughly $50 billion in planned investment concentrated in a single rural county.
- Amazon AWS: $35 billion
- Google: $15 billion
- Combined investment: $50 billion
The scale of the projects reflects growing demand for computing infrastructure as cloud services and artificial intelligence applications continue to expand.
The County Was Prepared Years Before Amazon Arrived
The developments are being built on land that had already been assembled and prepared for industrial use. A federal pandemic recovery grant helped Montgomery County establish a large industrial site near Interstate 70. Missouri later provided additional funding to support site preparation and infrastructure improvements designed to attract major employers.
The broader development area now covers approximately 5,000 acres, giving operators room for future expansion beyond the initial construction phases. For hyperscale companies such as Amazon and Google, finding large sites with existing infrastructure has become increasingly important as new data center projects grow in size.
The Key Number Is Not Acres — It Is Megawatts
Land is only one requirement for modern data centers. Electricity has become the primary factor determining where large facilities can be built. Google disclosed that it has already contracted more than 1 gigawatt of new generating capacity in Missouri and plans to support the development of an additional 500 megawatts.
- Contracted capacity: 1,000 MW
- Additional planned capacity: 500 MW
The figures illustrate the scale of power required to support next-generation cloud computing and AI workloads. As data center operators expand, access to reliable energy infrastructure is becoming as important as access to land.
Missouri Is Part of a Much Larger Spending Cycle
The Montgomery County projects are part of a broader infrastructure expansion taking place across the technology sector.
Google has indicated that it expects to spend approximately $190 billion on infrastructure and data center development. Amazon has separately stated that it could invest up to $200 billion to support growing AI demand.
- Amazon: Up to $200 billion
- Google: Approximately $190 billion
These investments are being directed toward data centers, networking infrastructure, power systems, and computing capacity needed to support cloud services and artificial intelligence applications.
Economic Benefits Come With Local Scrutiny
Local officials expect the projects to generate construction activity, permanent jobs, and new tax revenue for Montgomery County. At the same time, some residents have raised concerns regarding tax incentives, transparency, and public oversight of development agreements.
Questions have also been raised about how future tax revenues will be distributed and how large-scale industrial projects could affect local infrastructure. Similar debates have emerged in other U.S. communities that have attracted hyperscale data center developments.
Montgomery County Has Become a Strategic Data Center Location
A few years ago, Montgomery County was largely absent from discussions about U.S. technology infrastructure. Today, it hosts adjacent Amazon and Google projects worth a combined $50 billion, supported by thousands of acres of industrial land and significant new power capacity.
The projects highlight how data center development is expanding beyond traditional technology hubs and into regions that can provide the land, energy resources, and infrastructure required for large-scale operations.
Whether additional operators follow remains uncertain, but Montgomery County has already secured two of the largest data center investments announced in the Midwest.
Marina Lubimova
