Amazon is adding to its major Midwest technology hub investment while helping to shape the future of artificial intelligence. The company will invest $10 billion dollars in Ohio over the next five years.
The company will use the money to expand its Amazon Web Service data centers. They house equipment for powering AI, machine learning and other cloud computing technologies.
Data centers provide the power behind everyday tasks like prompting ChatGPT, streaming movies and performing Google searches.
The latest investment is in addition to Amazon’s $7.8 billion plan for Ohio announced in 2023 and the more than $6 billion it has already spent in the Buckeye State.
State officials said the investment will bring hundreds of jobs through the end of 2030.
Amazon has already contributed around $3.8 billion to the state’s gross domestic product. Their contributions support more than 4,700 jobs annually and create demand for telecommunications, software development and power generation workers.
While the company currently has seven data centers in central Ohio, it’s unclear how many more they will build. However, Amazon plans to expand into other parts of the state.
“As reliance on digital services continues to grow, so does the importance of data centers; they are critical to today’s modern economy,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said.
The White House even created a Task Force on AI Datacenter Infrastructure this year to discuss strategies for best contributing to the future of AI.
The global demand for data centers is expected to grow by upwards of 22% per year in the next six years, according to the consultant firm McKinsey and Company.
There are currently more than 2,500 data centers in the United States, with Amazon Web Services holding a 31% market share of online computing resources. That’s more than Microsoft, Google and IBM combined.
