Amazon announced Wednesday it will invest at least $10 billion and add 500 jobs over five years in a new data center campus to be built in Richmond County, 80 miles east of Charlotte.
The announcement represents the largest initial investment for a North Carolina project, though Toyota Motor is spending $15 billion on its electric vehicle battery plant in Randolph County. Amazon is the fourth-largest U.S. company based on market cap of $2.2 trillion.
The project for Amazon Web Services will power the company’s rapidly growing artificial intelligence infrastructure and be located in Rockingham’s Energy Way Industrial Park. The park is adjacent to Duke Energy’s Smith Energy Complex, a natural-gas-powered generation plant that opened in 2001.
“Customers like AWS are best-suited to locations where we already have robust transmission infrastructure and capacity to add large-use customers, as is the case in Richmond County, reducing the need for new grid infrastructure,” Duke spokesman Bill Norton says. “Existing megasites such as this have the capacity to host facilities like data centers and take advantage of existing infrastructure to accelerate power delivery in a manner that reduces costs for our customers.”
The data center campus will be located on nearly 800 acres and will ultimately feature 20 buildings, each spanning approximately 200,000 to 225,000 square feet.
“This was always a dream that Richmond County would get a major project, but I never thought it would be a $10 billion project,” says Gene McLaurin, a former state senator and Rockingham mayor. He has chaired the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina for the past four years.
“At a time when artificial intelligence is changing the way we work and innovate, North Carolina will stay at the front of the innovation landscape by attracting top technology companies like Amazon that support hundreds of good-paying jobs,” said Gov. Josh Stein, who attended an announcement event in the county.
The Amazon deal was accomplished with local economic incentives, but without state incentives that are typical of most such projects. Richmond County’s Board of Commissioners on Tuesday approved a 20-year incentive package of cash grants equal to 50 percent of the annual property tax and 65 percent of annual personal property tax for each of the 20 buildings. That package is contingent on $1 billion of investments and 50 jobs by the end of 2030.
Rick Watkins, chairman of the Richmond County Board of Commissioners, said the Amazon project “will serve as a catalyst to transform the local economy, provide high-paying jobs for our citizens and improve the quality of life for all residents.”
State Senator leader Phil Berger noted that Amazon’s prospective investment outweighs the entirety of Richmond County’s property tax base, which as of 2023 was $3.2 billion.
“While it’s not a whole lot of jobs, there’s the potential for a great deal of local tax revenue over time that doesn’t have a corresponding local expense,” such as for additional school construction, Berger said. “So I can see the huge value of that.”
Berger went on to say that his general concern with data-center projects is whether they will deplete the state’s available baseload capacity for power generation.
But “the conversations I’ve had with the Amazon folks and conversations I’ve had with Duke folks is [that] they feel pretty confident that this is not something that will be a detriment overall to Duke’s ability to deliver power to other customers.”
McLaurin cited two key reasons that Amazon selected the site:
-
Abundant water, which is critical for datacenters, due to major investments in wastewater treatment by the city of Rockingham and distribution lines by Richmond County over the past decade.
-
Duke Energy’s support and available power generation. The utility’s Smith Energy Complex includes natural gas-fired turbines capable of producing more than 2,200 megawatts of electricity.
Amazon’s move comes amid a larger push by the company to grow its AI and cloud computing capabilities.
“Amazon’s $10 billion investment in North Carolina underscores our commitment to driving innovation and advancing the future of cloud computing and AI technology,” David Zapolsky, Amazon’s chief global affairs and legal officer, said in a release. “This investment will position North Carolina as a hub for cutting-edge technology, create hundreds of high-skilled jobs, and drive significant economic growth.”
The announcement is a huge victory for North Carolina’s efforts to attract industry to struggling rural areas. Richmond County has about 42,000 residents, a decline of about 4,600 people since 2010. Median household income was about $43,000 in 2023 and about 23% of the population are deemed in poverty by the U.S. Census Bureau. About 40% of county residents are non-white, while 16% have a college degree.
Amazon has more than 100 data centers globally. It has invested $12 billion in North Carolina since 2010, mostly in fulfillment and distribution centers for its delivery service.
