Building the infrastructure for the Intelligence Age in Michigan

Today, alongside Governor Gretchen Whitmer, local community and labor leaders, and our partners at Oracle, Related Digital, and Walbridge, we broke ground on The Barn⁠(opens in a new window), a 1GW data center campus in Saline, Michigan.

This project is moving forward because we have worked to build it in partnership with the community and because Governor Whitmer has helped create the conditions for Michigan to lead on projects like this. From the beginning, our goal has been to build infrastructure in a way that does right by the people and communities helping make it possible.

That means making a clear set of commitments.

First, local residents will not bear the cost of the infrastructure required to support this project. The infrastructure and energy needed for The Barn will be paid for by the project, and costs will not be passed on to local ratepayers. To be clear, consumers will be protected from paying more in electricity bills because of this project.

Second, we have to protect local water resources. The project is designed to use a closed-loop cooling system that uses about as much water as a typical office building.

Third, this project should create real work and real opportunity for Michigan workers. In Michigan, that means union construction jobs, skilled trades, and a project being built by the kinds of people and companies that know how to do this work well. The Barn is expected to create more than 2,500 union construction jobs in addition to 450 permanent onsite jobs, 1,500 county-wide jobs and an additional 1,000 indirect jobs.

We are also partnering with Michigan’s Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, along with participating community colleges and other state and local partners, on AI literacy and workforce training opportunities focused on practical, workforce-relevant skills.

These commitments reflect our principle that the communities helping build the infrastructure for advanced AI should share in the opportunities it creates.