According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft announced the final phase of its $3.3 billion AI data centre project in Wisconsin, known as the world’s most advanced AI data centre. The Vice-President of Microsoft, Brad Smith, indicated that the facility would be operational in early 2026, initially for the training of the OpenAI model and possibly for future Microsoft and other clients.
Smith also announced an additional $4 billion investment in Wisconsin on Thursday to build a second data centre of the same size. He said that the project had been at the forefront of technology because of three main elements: the quantitative advantage of the GPU in Weida, the computational performance of the GPU and the network system that connected all the computing resources. ” The combination of these elements makes it possible to train more advanced AI models than ever before. ” The first data centre consists of three buildings, with a total area of approximately 112,000 square metres and an area of 315 acres. Tens of thousands of British GB200 GPUs are deployed internally, with aircraft-size communications up to a byte (TB) per second. Microsoft used a two-storey architecture to reduce network distances and delays, and the project construction consumed 120-mile medium-pressure cables and 72.6-mile mechanical pipelines.
The newly announced $4 billion data centre will be the third member of the Microsoft Fairwater Advanced AI Data Centre family, with the first seat in Wisconsin and the second seat in Georgia. Smith revealed that Microsoft purchased land from the iPhone on behalf of Fuscon, “we have benefited from its prior infrastructure inputs”. The plot, which was considered to be the core area of the $10 billion investment plan of Fuscon, ultimately remained largely unimplemented. The Centre ‘ s cooling system is also at the forefront of technology. Smith stressed: “The current hotspot in Wisconsin is whether companies will use Lake Michigan water to cool — the answer is no. ” More than 90 per cent of the facilities use water and chemical substances injected into the closed-ring system during the construction phase, without the need to replenish new sources of water; the remainder uses outdoor air cooling and only uses water cooling during high temperatures. Microsoft indicates that the annual water consumption in a single data centre is only equivalent to the weekly water consumption at the peak of the summer of an 18-hole golf course or the annual water use at a restaurant.
Smith expressed concern about the population ‘ s concerns about high electricity prices in data centres, and Microsoft has negotiated higher electricity prices with the local energy company WE Energys to share costs.
