Microsoft to Begin Permitting for North Carolina Data Center

Microsoft acquired 1,350 acres in North Carolina back in November 2024 for $26.85 million. At the time, no concrete plans were shared.

But this week, Person County announced Microsoft will begin permitting later this year for what will become a massive data center campus near the Virginia border.

Microsoft has promised to “pay its own way” for this project to avoid increasing electricity prices, minimize water use, and create local jobs. That’s real risk management. When you’re dropping a multi-gigawatt campus in a rural county, you have to bring the community along.

Every hyperscaler is learning the same lesson: data center development is now a utility-scale infrastructure business.

The limiting factor is no longer chips, or even land, but electricity. Processing capacity and acres of land are useless unless you can secure the megawatts needed to bring data center projects online fast.