Microsoft Buys Becker Land For New Data Center

(KNSI) – A tech giant is increasing its footprint in central Minnesota.

Microsoft closed a deal with an Xcel Energy affiliate for 295 acres of land near the Sherco plant. The final price tag was $17.7 million. The utility has since said that the land will be used for a new data center.

It is a nice bounce back for Xcel, which stayed committed to selling the land after Google backed out of an expected purchase near the coal plant in late 2022.

Microsoft has yet to release any details on its plans for the site. Data Center Dynamics says the company has also gotten the go-ahead in West Des Moines, Iowa, for a third and fourth data center in that city.

As the Midwest attracts more tech investment, Minnesota and Becker could see additional data centers near Sherco. The article says Elk River Technologies is in talks with Xcel for a 348-acre facility. Elk River is a shell company, and it is unknown what major firm is connected to it as of yet.

Data centers house computer systems. Microsoft is a major player in the cloud space. It created OneDrive for consumers, which includes its popular Office 365 line of products, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Its Enterprise, or business, cloud service is called Azure. Much like Amazon, it is one of the fastest-growing segments in the company.

Cloud services allow applications to be housed off-site rather than in an individual’s home or a company’s individual offices. Everything gets moved to centralized locations that are huge in size.

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