- A Wisconsin family has agreed to sell their 407-acre ranch to Microsoft for $76 million.
- The land is adjacent to another 641 acres Microsoft purchased from the village of Mount Pleasant – for a total of $99.7 million.
We’re actually not surprised, as more investment and construction surges forward. It’s crazy to think back to three years ago when this whole area was desolate, and now it’s almost all developed from the Illinois border to Milwaukee.
Highly expensive pay out
A Wisconsin family has agreed to sell 407 acres of their land, including a local pumpkin farm attraction, to Microsoft for a total of $76 million, according to the Milwaukee Business Journal.
In fact, Microsoft’s compensation is far higher than the land’s current valuation. Mount Pleasant Village Assessor Dan McHugh told The Verge that the Kruzig family’s land was originally assessed at $174,200 in 2023, but that it rose to $598,400 after improvements were made.
However, Reddit user @mccaullycreek argues that agricultural land has a use value assessment, so the evaluation is based on its use, houses are based on sales value rather than land size, the tax value of $25,000 per acre is probably closer to $1,400 per acre.
How is the Microsoft’s plans
The land, which includes a pumpkin farm and a nine-acre corn maze, is adjacent to another 641 acres Microsoft purchased from the Village of Mount Pleasant – for a total of $99.7 million. Microsoft’s ultimate goal is to build a data centre campus in the area, with a planned investment of more than $1 billion.
As part of an agreement with Foxconn Technology Group, the local government initially offered the Kreutziger family of Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, one-third of that amount in 2017. But the family declined, choosing to hold out for a better offer. The tech giant plans to use the land to build a data center campus, which is, of course, part of a $1 billion investment in the village of Mount Pleasant. Currently, Microsoft has several data centres.
All told, the deal is a happy ending for Mount Pleasant Village.
Also read: AWS to build data centre in Thailand as other tech giants consider investing
Accelerate construction to support ChatGPT
Microsoft support in construction and expansion of artificial intelligence required data center infrastructure is in the lead. ChatGPT is a very data-intensive platform, and OpenAI, the developer behind ChatGPT, will continue to run chatbots on Microsoft’s upcoming Azure cloud platform.
In March, Microsoft announced plans to build a new nearly 70,000-square-meter hyperscale data center campus near Quincy, Wash., about 20 miles from Microsoft’s main data center hub in Washington. The 4-square-kilometer campus, called the Malaga Project, will house three 23,000 square meters of computer rooms on land Microsoft bought for $9.2 million. The complex is scheduled to be completed by 2027. The powerful microprocessors used in the AI infrastructure will require reliable cooling systems at the Quincy Complex, which pump Columbia River water directly to the data center.
Microsoft also plans to build a $2.3 million waterworks unit that will draw water from the river to cool the advanced microprocessors on the campus — which the company estimates will need at least 121,000 gallons of water a day for each of the three buildings on the campus.
