Amazon invests $10 billion in NC data centers for AI

Ken Metral

04 Jun 2025 — 2 min read

Credit: Amazon Web Services, Inc.

Amazon is making a significant move in the artificial intelligence arms race, announcing plans to invest $10 billion in new data centers in North Carolina. The investment is aimed at expanding the company's cloud and AI infrastructure, reflecting its deep commitment to staying at the forefront of generative AI development.

The announcement comes as part of Amazon’s broader capital expenditure strategy for 2025, with the company allocating up to $100 billion this year—much of it focused on artificial intelligence. The investment underscores Amazon’s urgency to compete with other tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI, all of whom are aggressively scaling their AI capabilities.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has repeatedly emphasized the transformative potential of generative AI, describing it as a “once-in-a-lifetime type of business opportunity.” This investment is a direct response to the rising demand for high-powered computing resources needed to train and run large language models and other AI systems.

The new data centers will also have a tangible local impact. Amazon says the North Carolina project will create approximately 500 jobs, providing a boost to the state’s tech economy. “Generative AI is driving increased demand for advanced cloud infrastructure and compute power,” the company noted in a blog post. “Our investment will support the future of AI from AWS data centers in the Tar Heel State.”

This move follows similar infrastructure investments by Amazon in other states. In January, the company announced it would spend at least $11 billion in Georgia to build data centers that support its AWS cloud computing business and AI workloads.

Amazon’s push into AI infrastructure is accompanied by a growing lineup of AI products. Over the past year, the company has introduced proprietary language models, AI chips branded as Trainium, a shopping-focused chatbot, and Bedrock—a platform that allows businesses to use third-party AI models. In addition, Amazon has made a substantial $8 billion investment in the AI startup Anthropic, the developer behind the Claude chatbot.

As competition in AI intensifies, Amazon's aggressive capital deployment highlights its determination to shape the future of this rapidly evolving sector—both through its own innovations and strategic partnerships.

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