Microsoft’s newest data center project will create up to 200 new jobs by the end of 2032 in northwest Indiana, according to a press release issued by Indiana Governor Eric J. Holcomb.
The $1 billion project will establish a new data center in La Porte, Indiana designed to accelerate cloud computing infrastructure to support growth in technology and artificial intelligence worldwide.
“Indiana is committed to being a central hub in the global economy of the future, and this latest announcement ensures Hoosier communities and talent will be key to widespread advancements in cloud and artificial intelligence technology,” Holcomb said. “As a state, we’ve built a pro-growth business climate and implemented a future-focused framework to attract major investments in high-tech, high-growth sectors. We’re excited to welcome Microsoft’s new data center to Indiana and look forward to the incredible value add impact this will have on our statewide data driven ecosystem, new career opportunities, specifically the greater northwest Indiana community.”
Data centers serve as a hub that contains the computational and storage capacities essential for the delivery of shared applications and data. Smaller organizations might accommodate these facilities within a dedicated room of an existing building, while larger organizations typically operate several centers exclusively for their extensive data storage and sharing requirements.
Microsoft intends to build their new, 245,000-square-foot data center on 489 acres at the Radius Industrial Park in La Porte to help power the Microsoft Cloud and support the next-level digital transformation spurred by the widespread adoption of cloud computing and artificial intelligence. It joins the Redmond, Washington-based company’s worldwide network of cloud computing infrastructure, which includes more than 300 data centers.
“Microsoft is excited to expand our datacenter infrastructure into Indiana, with our first campus to be built in La Porte,” said Bowen Wallace, Microsoft CVP Datacenters, Americas Region. “We appreciate the collaboration with the State, City and the La Porte Economic Advancement Partnership that has made this opportunity possible. We look forward to an enduring and beneficial relationship with Indiana and the City of La Porte as we build and scale our data center infrastructure to support our customer and partners.”
The design, planning and permitting process is expected to start in late 2024. This is the fourth major data center construction project announced for Indiana in 2024, joining projects currently in progress in Fort Wayne, Jeffersonville, and New Carlisle.
“Projects like this happen once in a lifetime, and their effects are felt forever,” said La Porte Mayor Tom Dermody. “What makes this even better is that we get to work with the talented and community-minded team at Microsoft. From the very beginning of this project, they have been committed and attentive to the needs of our community. We are incredibly excited to welcome them here and look forward to a strong collaboration long into the future.”
Data Center Boom
The pending data center projects in Indiana reflect an ongoing surge in data center construction across the U.S. that’s largely been attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw Americans stuck at home and utilizing the internet more often. This, in turn, drove companies like Amazon and Walmart to significantly expand their data processing capabilities.
There are more data centers in the U.S. than in any other country on Earth – and it’s not even close.
As of March 2024, there were 5,381 data centers operating in the U.S., according to data from Statista.com. Germany has the second-most data centers of any country in the world – with just 521. China and India, the first and second most populous countries in the world, respectively, have just 612 data centers combined.
“The demand for data centers is expected to surge in the coming years as the world becomes increasingly interconnected,” The Birmingham Group’s President and CEO, Brian Binke, wrote in a blog post last fall. “With companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook leading the charge, data center construction will continue to thrive, supporting the digital infrastructure needed for a connected future.”
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Frequently Asked Questions
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