Wyoming touts ‘ample land, firm power’ in bid to woo data centers

Wyoming officials held a closer-door summit with representatives from Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon, and energy companies in a bid to attract more data center development to the state, according to an article by Snejana Farberov for Realtor.com.

"In a statement announcing the event, summit host Jacob Hochard, the Knobloch associate professor of conservation economics in the UW Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, characterized Wyoming as an 'energy powerhouse' now entering a new chapter driven by AI." Wyoming hopes to capture a piece of the growing data center market, which is currently concentrated in Virginia and Texas but is spreading out throughout the country. There are 21 data centers in the state, with another one under construction.

Some experts say Wyoming is uniquely positioned for data center growth. "Latham Jenkins, a real estate agent with Live Water Properties, points out that the large-scale, multi-gigawatt projects proposed for Wyoming are largely slated for areas that have been seeking economic diversification for decades and are driven by access to power, land, and infrastructure instead of lifestyle amenities."