Microsoft has raised its data center goals and plans
Microsoft's pledge to spend billions on a data center in Mount Pleasant spells a comeback story for a business park where tech giant Foxconn had once said it would create 13,000 jobs.
The value of Microsoft's project could in time top $10 billion given the amount of land it controls in the village's Wisconsin Innovation Park.
In May, the company announced it would spend $3.3 billion by 2026 to build a first phase of the project, a threefold increase from the $1 billion it initially said it would spend.
The $1 billion dated to early 2023, when Microsoft bought its first 315-acre parcel in the business park and unveiled plans for two data center buildings. Then, in December the company bought an additional 1,030 acres.
Microsoft is building its data center on land that Foxconn was initially expected to use for a $10 billion LCD manufacturing plant that in 2017 then President Donald Trump touted as the "eighth wonder of the world."
Neither the investment nor the 13,000 jobs Foxconn promised materialized.
Here's how the Foxconn and Microsoft stories have so far played out
State spent $1.4 billion on Foxconn business park
To bring Foxconn to the state, Mount Pleasant, Racine County and the state spent $1.4 billion to develop a business park. The state wheeled out nearly $3 billion in subsidies based on the company's promise that it would spend $10 billion to build a large-screen LCD manufacturing operation that would create 13,000 jobs.
Foxconn quickly scrapped that plan.
The company's investment goal in Mount Pleasant was reduced to $672 million under a revised tax credit agreement negotiated with Gov. Tony Evers in 2021 that recognized Foxconn would not come close to what it initially promised. That agreement reduced the company's maximum state subsidy from $285 million to $80 million.
Microsoft includes AI training for business and tech leaders
Microsoft's push in southeast Wisconsin includes not only data centers but a multimillion-dollar investment in training programs that will teach business and technical leaders how best to adapt AI and transform work culture, support start-up businesses, prepare hundreds of students for careers as data center technicians, and provide boot camp-style training for more than 100,000 people who need new skills to work in the artificial intelligence economy.
The effort builds on Microsoft's previous investments in business and workforce development in Wisconsin and brings in many of the same partners, including the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Connected Systems Institute, the Green Bay Packers and the Titletown Tech business development center, the Madison startup accelerator gener8tor, United Way and Gateway Technical College.
Microsoft also intends to open an AI Co-Innovation Lab lab at the Connected Systems Institute to help Wisconsin manufacturers, entrepreneurs and other business connect with Microsoft AI experts for guidance on implementing AI technology to grow their businesses.
Mount Pleasant officials said Microsoft's rapid pace reflects a partnership in which Microsoft is bringing its experience from the more than 300 data centers it has built worldwide.
Foxconn says it employs about 1,000 manufacturing workers
Foxconn has confirmed it now employs about 1,000 people in Mount Pleasant who make data servers. Foxconn has called its Mount Pleasant plant "a key manufacturing site" in a global operation that makes about 40% of the world's data servers.
The servers produced in Mount Pleasant by Foxconn Industrial Internet, a business operation of parent company Hon Hai Technology Group, are used in data centers operated by large-scale cloud management companies.
Large banks of the servers support information storage, online video platforms, phone apps and other big-data functions. The heart of each server is a printed circuit board that, depending on customer requirements, can contain thousands of electronic components.
In addition to data servers, Foxconn in Mount Pleasant has also made microinverters, a key electronic component of home solar energy systems, for Enphase Energy.
Reporting for this story was from Karl Ebert, Ricardo Torres and Tom Daykin of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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