Amazon is making its biggest public effort yet to win over the towns hosting its data centers, pledging more than $1 billion over five years to the U.S. communities that house its cloud infrastructure. In a Friday blog post, AWS chief executive Matt Garman framed the program as both a goodwill gesture and a warning: more than 100 data center moratoriums are under consideration across the country, and he said they could cost the United States its lead in the race for artificial intelligence.
The new program, called Built Together, will fund free community college, job training, energy-efficiency upgrades for homes and schools, and other local projects chosen by data center communities. The commitment sits on top of more than $1 billion that Amazon says it has already given to such communities over the past three years.
"Right now there are over 100 data center moratoriums being considered across the country," Garman wrote. "If these measures are enacted, the U.S. could be writing its own losing ticket to this race, and the consequences would last generations."

NDAs scrapped after years of secrecy

The most striking part of the pledge may be what Amazon is giving up: secrecy. The company says it will no longer use nondisclosure agreements with government agencies or county officials when negotiating data center projects. Amazon also promised to install lower-emission backup generators at new sites, publish its energy and water use every year, and pay enough for electricity that local residents' bills do not rise.
Secrecy has been one of the flashpoints of the data center boom. In July, The New York Times reported that secret agreements at all levels of government were crucial to assembling plans for Hyperion, Amazon's massive Louisiana data center. Under typical NDAs, local officials could not disclose basic details such as which tech company was behind a project, let alone its energy and water demands. Garman blamed much of the backlash on "misinformation and outright lies" about data centers, a claim likely to be hotly disputed by opponents.

The business stakes behind the charm offensive

The timing is no accident. Amazon is projecting roughly $220 billion in capital spending this year, largely on data centers and chips — more than the cash its business generates in a year. Data centers have gone from background infrastructure to one of the most contested land uses in America, with fights over power bills, water use, and property values breaking out from Virginia to Texas.
Amazon's Maryland nuclear bet illustrates how far the company is reaching: it recently scrapped a data center campus after local opposition, then signed a 20-year power deal with Constellation to expand output at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant instead. The Built Together program appears designed to prevent repeats — a bet that $1 billion in local spending, open books, and no NDAs can buy the company the one thing its servers cannot generate: community consent.
By Hamza Faisal