Microsoft’s 1st Mt. Pleasant data center fully online with 500 employees

By Jon Styf
The Center Square

Microsoft says that it has 550 full-time employees on site at the recently completed Fairview data center in Mount Pleasant.

The company also says that the number of employees will “grow over time” to an expected 800 when a second data center comes online in 2028.

The employers were defined as “on site” employees of both Microsoft and its contractors.

The project is the first of the $20.6 billion in data centers that the company has planned in the state.

Microsoft says that it spent $4.7 billion between 2024 and 2028 on the construction of hyper scale data centers in the state.

Microsoft is building an adjacent second data center that is scheduled to open in 2028. The company said that 10,000 construction workers were involved in the Fairview project.

“With our Fairwater data center now fully operational, Wisconsin is now home to the world’s most powerful supercomputer,” Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith said in a statement. “This campus will help power the next generation of AI innovation globally and provide long-term economic opportunity locally through hundreds of highly skilled jobs and continued investment in the region.”

Data centers have been unpopular in polling both with Wisconsin voters and nationally.

A recent Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll showed that voters believe data centers on not worth the strain on local electricity, water and infrastructure and that the negatives outweigh the importance for national security and competing with China.

The poll also found that voters believe local governments should be cautious about new data centers and those concerns outweigh the jobs, tax revenue and support for America’s digital economy that they bring.

Microsoft is expected to be the largest beneficiary of a wide-ranging Wisconsin sales tax exemption on everything from construction materials to electricity that is estimated to lose the state $1.5 billion in initial foregone state sales tax from four data center projects, according to a new Legislative Audit Bureau report.

In addition, the state will lose $369 million annually once construction on the projects are complete.

Wisconsin’s Department of Revenue originally estimated the value of the incentives would be $8.5 million for the full multi-year construction of a facility and $735,000 recurring afterward.

But hyper-scale data centers have changed that math with Microsoft alone announcing more than $20.6 billion in data centers in the state.

The state is expected to have $36.9 billion in data centers from just four companies with the state forgoing an estimated $40 million in sales tax for every $1 billion in company investment.

OpenAI, Oracle and Vantage Data Centers have announced more than $15 billion in data center investments in Port Washington. Epic Hosting is expected to spend $347 million in Verona. Meta has announced a $1 billion project in Beaver Dam.