Amazon Web Services to invest $35 billion in data centres in Virginia by 2040

Washington: Amazon Web Services will be investing $35 billion to expand the data centres in Virginia in the next 17 years. This will create 1,000 new jobs in the cloud services division.

Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin on Friday said AWS will build multiple data centre campuses in the state. Amazon in 2018 announced that its second headquarters will be in northern Virginia. It will eventually employ 25,000 people.

Virginia is developing a new Mega Data Center Incentive Program which is waiting for approval from state lawmakers. This will also allow the company to get a 5-year extension of Data Center Sales and Use tax exemptions on equipment and software. The company will also be eligible to receive a state grant of up to $149 million for site and infrastructure improvements, workforce development, and other project-related costs, reported Reuters.

Last year, AWS revealed that it invested $35 billion in data centres located in northern Virginia over the past decade. These establishments have 3,500 full-time employees.

Governor Youngkin recently withdrew from competition to bring home a motor battery plant built by iconic American company Ford Motor and China's Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL), the largest battery producer in the world. He said the proposal for the plant will serve "as a front for the Chinese Communist party." He told Bloomberg that he looks forward to bringing a great company to Virginia but it will not be the one that uses "kind of a Trojan-horse relationship with the Chinese Communist Party."