Two companies are looking to develop artificial intelligence (AI) data centers in North Dakota.
First reported by The Information, Commissioner of Commerce Josh Teigen revealed during a Public Service Commission meeting in August that two companies had approached him and state Governor Doug Burgum about developing AI data centers.
The data center projects would start between 500MW and 1GW projects, but could scale up to 5-10GW facilities eventually.
The projects would cost up to $125 billion each.
The identity of the companies involved was not shared, but both were described as having trillion-dollar market capitalizations.
This could include businesses such as Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Apple.
Microsoft has previously been reported as looking into developing a major AI data center. In March 2024, Microsoft and OpenAI were allegedly investigating building a $100 billion supercomputer campus that could reach as much as 5GW of capacity.
Dubbed Stargate, that project did not have a specific location associated with it, nor were details about the chips that would be used.
The Information has speculated that one of the companies in talks with North Dakota may be Microsoft, noting that Governor Burgum was previously a Microsoft executive.
Commissioner Teigen said that the interest in such projects has increased, adding that he is "at the table with the companies that are most aggressively pursuing this."
Teigen is also encouraging the state to make it easier for companies to rezone land and gain access to power, stating that it risks missing out on these major investments if it doesn't.
North Dakota does not have a large data center market, with Data Center Map listing only seven facilities in the state. Despite this, it saw the highest relative growth in electricity demand caused by data centers - 37 percent in four years - according to a July 2024 report from the Energy Information Administration.
Data center companies operating in North Dakota include cryptomining and AI provider Applied Digital, which secured $200 million in financing to build out its facilities in the state in June of this year. It has agreed to a deal with an unnamed hyperscaler which will take up space at the expanded facility.
The state is also one of the few in the US that produces more energy than it uses and is the third-largest producer of crude oil in the nation.
Later this month, the Morton County Commission in North Dakota is set to hold a meeting about whether it should implement a moratorium on data centers within its borders as a preventative measure, as reported by The Bismarck Tribune.
