Microsoft Fairwater Campus (Racine / Mount Pleasant)

The story

In 2024 Microsoft announced a $3.3 billion investment to build a state-of-the-art AI datacenter campus in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, revitalizing the site where a multi-billion-dollar Foxconn manufacturing complex had stalled years earlier. Sized for hundreds of megawatts of compute, the Fairwater campus is engineered around high-density liquid-cooled server racks designed for multi-exascale foundation model training. The facility utilizes a closed-loop recirculating cooling system that eliminates evaporative water loss, drawing electricity from regional zero-carbon nuclear and green power.

Notable

• Multi-billion-dollar hyperscale campus occupying over 1,000 acres in Racine County, Wisconsin.
• Built upon land originally acquired for the unfulfilled 2017 Foxconn LCD manufacturing mega-complex.
• Features closed-loop liquid-to-chip cooling that consumes zero water during ongoing compute operations.
• Serves as a primary Midwest anchor for Microsoft's global AI infrastructure and OpenAI collaboration.

Expansions

• 2023: Microsoft acquires land in Mount Pleasant originally slated for Foxconn
• 2024: $3.3 billion AI datacenter expansion formally announced with White House participation
• 2026: multi-building hyperscale campus scheduled to begin live computing operations