Amazon’s answer to data center backlash: $1 billion for community college and home energy upgrades

Tech giants are trying to win over communities that oppose data centers as they pour billions into the infrastructure powering their AI ambitions. Amazon’s latest approach is to invest more than $1 billion over five years in job training, free community college, and energy efficiency upgrades.

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman announced the Built Together program in an Oct. 2 corporate post that also defended the company’s data center build-out. He compared the build-out to public benefit projects such as the interstate highway system, and wrote that Amazon understands communities’ “apprehension” about data centers. Still, he wrote, the more than 100 proposed data center moratoriums under construction could sideline the U.S. from the AI race. 

“If these measures are enacted, the U.S. could be writing its own losing ticket to this race, and the consequences would last generations,” Garman wrote. “As a country, we can’t afford to find ourselves in that position.”

Amazon isn’t the only hyperscaler trying to make the data center boom easier for host........

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