The Microsoft data center campus, currently under construction, is reflected in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, September 18, 2025.
Audrey Richardson | Reuters
Local officials have signed off on Microsoft’s plans to build 15 more data centers in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, near an existing site that the technology company is expanding.
Additional data center capacity will allow Microsoft to recognize revenue that it has booked from OpenAI and other clients. Amazon, Google and Oracle are racing Microsoft to build data centers filled with Nvidia chips that can train and run generative artificial intelligence models.
Finding sites for these facilities can be challenging because utilities don’t always have the necessary energy available. And increasingly, people who live near prospective data center sites are mounting opposition campaigns.
Mount Pleasant homeowners and officials have generally welcomed Microsoft’s expansion in the village.
In 2017, device manufacturer Foxconn announced plans to build a $10 billion plant that would create 13,000 jobs in an initiative trumpeted by President Donald Trump. The village made room, buying up land. State tax dollars went toward infrastructure improvements. But Foxconn didn’t exactly follow through. By 2023, the company employed 1,000 people across the state, and the village owed over $250 million.
In the adjacent village of Caledonia, many residents spoke out against Microsoft’s request to rezone land for a data center, and in September the company decided to stop pursuing that location.
The new work in Mount Pleasant is divided into two lots just northwest of Microsoft’s current site. For the larger of the two lots, Microsoft bought the land from the village and from private owners in 2023 and 2024. The two sets of plans call for almost 9 million square feet of building area, with three proposed substations, according to documents on file with the village.
Together, the taxable value of the proposed developments exceeds $13 billion, according to the paperwork.
Mount Pleasant’s village board on Monday unanimously approved the two sets of plans. During a public comment period, six people expressed support for Microsoft’s plans, and three people raised concerns.
One of the opponents said jobs working on the data centers won’t be permanent. David DeGroot, Mount Pleasant’s village board president, objected to that characterization.
“I’m addressing this to all of the union folks that are here,” DeGroot said. “When I heard that these jobs are temporary from somebody, if I was you, I would take umbrage to that, because it’s my understanding that you are going to be out there on those sites for the next 10 years, doing your jobs, plying your trade, and I don’t see anything temporary in 10 years.”
On Wednesday, the village planning commission approved site plans that factor in changes staff members had proposed. The 15 new data centers would not require more water than the 8.4 million gallons it’s expected to receive annually from the nearby city of Racine, Samuel Schultz, Mount Pleasant’s community development director, told the planning commission.
Microsoft can now submit final civil engineering plans and file building permits.
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