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Details
- Microsoft announced the completion of its Fairwater AI datacenter in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, on September 18, 2025, with operations slated to begin in early 2026. The $3.3 billion facility covers 315 acres and features three buildings totaling 1.2 million square feet.
- The datacenter is equipped with hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA GB200 GPUs in a single massive supercomputer cluster, delivering what Microsoft describes as 10 times the performance of the world's fastest supercomputer. Each rack contains 72 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs with 1.8 terabytes of GPU-to-GPU bandwidth.
- Advanced liquid cooling systems enable closed-loop water circulation, requiring water only during construction and eliminating evaporation losses. The two-story rack design supports efficient vertical networking between computing units to reduce latency.
- This marks the first phase of Microsoft's Wisconsin expansion, with plans for an additional $4 billion datacenter bringing total local investment to over $7 billion. Microsoft aims to hire roughly 500 full-time employees by the end of 2026.
- The Fairwater facility will primarily support training for OpenAI models and Microsoft's Copilot services, interconnected by high-speed fiber spanning the equivalent of circling the globe 4.5 times and linking to more than 400 Microsoft datacenters worldwide.
Impact
With this launch, Microsoft is taking a decisive lead in the escalating race for advanced AI infrastructure as cloud providers battle to support the next generation of AI models. The vast scale, specialized design, and financial outlay highlight a shift toward purpose-built AI supercomputers and could raise the competitive bar for rivals. This investment not only cements Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI but also signals the fierce capital demands now required for AI market leadership.
