Prime Highlights:
Google to invest $10 billion in West Memphis, Arkansas data center complex.
The data center complex will include five server farms, offices, internal roads, and a substation.
Key Facts:
Groot LLC, a company that is a subsidiary of Google, is developing the project.
The major contractors named are Turner Construction and Yates Construction.
Key Background :
Google is undertaking a historic investment of $10 billion to build a state-of-the-art data center campus in West Memphis, Arkansas. Covering about 486 hectares, the project will be among the largest private investments in the history of the state. To put it into perspective, it dwarfs the $3 billion Big River Steel facility, highlighting its prospective economic and technological implications for the state.
Construction will include five gigantic server farms, offices, an intra-campus road network, and a 10-hectare high-voltage substation. The substation alone will take $142 million and will serve to power Google’s power-sucking data center operations. These centers will be critical to supporting Google’s cloud infrastructure and storing its data services around the world.
Groot LLC, a Google-owned special-purpose entity, has been operating under the radar to manage land acquisition and development requests. The initiative is one of Google’s broader strategic plans to expand its data footprint across the U.S. to meet heightened demand for cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and other digital services.
In line with its sustainability strategy, Google plans to operate the Arkansas facility under its plan to achieve net-zero carbon emissions in all operations by 2030. That the location is close to underground aquifers might make it easy to use water-based cooling systems, an environmentally friendly substitute for traditional cooling systems.
Construction is already underway, with Turner Construction and Yates Construction signifying as the overall contractors in signs placed at the site. Both companies specialize in building high-end digital infrastructure, having worked on data center buildings for major tech firms in the U.S. south in the past. This move by Arkansas is going in line with a trend, as Google is simultaneously investing billions of dollars in other states as well, further establishing Google as a leader in building digital infrastructure.
