Economic Growth
Amazon Selects the City of Gilroy for New Data Center Investment
A transformative technology project bringing jobs, investment, and long-term economic growth.
Project Overview
Investing in Gilroy’s Future
Amazon has begun the development of a new data center project in Gilroy, California, marking a significant milestone for the community. The data center campus will create hundreds of jobs such as data center engineers, operations managers, network and security specialists, and local construction jobs and positions in the data center supply chain throughout the region and state.
Amazon is committed to responsible development and being a long-term, positive presence in the Gilroy community while delivering the digital infrastructure that powers California’s economy and essential services. The facilities are designed to operate efficiently and responsibly, with a focus on minimizing environmental impact while maximizing community benefit.
Amazon has operated data centers in Northern California since 2009, investing more than $5.1 billion in the region and supporting approximately 1,890 jobs. Amazon is actively working with local partners to ensure the jobs created by this project go to the people who call Gilroy home.
What is a Data Center?
Our modern lives leverage numerous technological innovations to bring ease and accessibility to our day to day. Data centers are a key enabling component of this, providing technology services that build out these capabilities. Amazon’s data centers help serve millions of active customers: they keep your information safe and instantly available, powering everything from texts and streaming to school lessons, banking, and even hospital care to better help patients.
For additional information, please visit the City of Gilroy’s AWS Data Center Project Website: https://www.cityofgilroy.org/1019/15010/Gilroy-Data-Center-by-AWS
- School assignments submitted through learning management systems
- Parents stream different Netflix shows while children play online games
- Smart home devices (thermostats, security cameras, baby monitors) connect to cloud servers
- Accesses course materials and submits assignments through university platforms
- Orders food delivery through apps
- Uses social media platforms
- Job searches
- Video calls with children and grandchildren
- Online banking and bill payments
- Medical portal access for healthcare records and appointments
- Improve situational awareness and real-time decision-making during emergencies
- Help dispatchers analyze live traffic, road conditions, and hazards
- Suggest faster and safer response routes
- Assist teams in prioritizing search areas to reduce response times
- Enhance responder safety by identifying potential risks on scene
- Support coordination with nonprofits and partner organizations during disaster response
- Support smarter, more efficient decision-making in crop and resource management
- Use precision agriculture tools to improve crop monitoring and yields
- Reduce chemical use through smart sprayers and targeted applications
- Monitor livestock health with AI-assisted tracking systems
- Improve water conservation through automated irrigation and demand-based watering
- Detect leaks early through smart irrigation and monitoring technology
- Provide AI-powered insights to support coaching and training decisions
- Analyze athlete performance mechanics and movement patterns
- Assist with injury prevention and recovery planning
- Support game strategy and opponent analysis
- Enhance scouting and recruiting with deeper performance data
- Provide additional analytics to complement (not replace) human evaluation
Amazon data centers aren’t raising your electricity bills—Here’s the data
Research found that Amazon fully pays for its own electricity costs to power its data centers.
Frequently Asked Questions
About The Project
Data centers serve as the foundation for virtually everything that happens online—from sending emails and online banking to shopping, streaming, and accessing health records. These specialized buildings house computing hardware, networking equipment, and technology infrastructure that make the internet as we know it possible. Despite its name, cloud computing doesn’t actually live in the clouds but operates through these same data centers, powering our everyday digital activities.
Beyond providing essential connectivity, data centers also contribute significantly to local communities through job creation, economic growth, and substantial tax revenue that helps fund schools and social services.
This project is located off Arroyo Circle in Gilroy, CA.
This project is expected to generate tax revenue for Gilroy and the surrounding region, providing sustainable funding for essential services, local schools, infrastructure projects, and more. The economic effects will strengthen the local economy through job creation, increased business activity, and new opportunities for local contractors and service providers.
Careers
Data center construction and operations generate hundreds of construction jobs and support a range of other positions, such as data center technicians, network specialists, engineering operation technicians, facility managers, security specialists, electricians, fiber-optic technicians, and air conditioning (HVAC) technicians. In Northern California alone, Amazon’s data center investments support an estimated 1,860 full-time equivalent jobs annually in the local economy.
Hiring for this data center is expected to begin in Summer 2026. This website will be updated as hiring opportunities become available. In addition, you can explore all open data center positions on the Amazon Web Services jobs page.
Amazon is committed to supporting local businesses and workers in the communities where they operate. While Amazon cannot guarantee specific numbers of local construction jobs, the company actively encourages general contractors and subcontractors to hire locally whenever possible.
Amazon invests in local workforce development programs that help individuals gain the skills needed for careers in cloud computing and technology. In addition, Amazon directly supports local job creation by purchasing goods and services from local businesses, and indirectly through business-to-business transactions in the Amazon Web Services supply chain.
Construction
Amazon is partnering with Skanska to build this data center campus.
Water
Amazon has engaged with state and local leaders over the past several years to develop facilities that align with community priorities. Each of Amazon’s two Gilroy data center buildings will use approximately 0.85 million gallons of water per year for cooling — for a combined total of 1.7 million gallons per year – roughly equivalent to the water usage of 16 households. These facilities will use 100% reclaimed water (also called reused or recycled water) for cooling when reclaimed water infrastructure is made available by the utility provider, further reducing reliance on potable water sources.
Amazon’s Gilroy data centers will rely on outside air cooling 97% of the year. On the hottest days of the year — roughly 3% of the time — Amazon will strategically deploy its water-based cooling technology that is 80% more efficient than the industry average. This approach reduces demand on the power grid by 25-35% during peak summer months.
No, Amazon’s data center project will not cause water and sewer utility rates to increase. Amazon is committed to paying for the full cost of necessary upgrades to supply the site with reclaimed water. Amazon will pay all applicable fees.
Energy
Local utility PG&E will provide 98 MWs of electricity to this Amazon data center campus through a dedicated grid connection. Amazon is paying for all expenses for new energy infrastructure and upgrades required to serve the data center, which also strengthens overall grid reliability for all PG&E customers. Additionally, Amazon has committed to reaching net-zero carbon emissions across all its operations by 2040 and is one of the world’s largest buyers of carbon-free energy. This includes over 70 projects for more than 1.6GWs of carbon-free energy across the state of California, which is equivalent to more than 450,000 U.S. homes.
Amazon has worked with local utility PG&E to ensure that it pays 100% of the costs associated with the new data center campus in Gilroy. This includes covering all expenses for new energy infrastructure and upgrades required to serve the data center, which also strengthens overall grid reliability for all PG&E customers. An independent study conducted found that Amazon pays for the costs to power its data centers—these expenses aren’t added to the bills of local residents or businesses. The study also found that in some regions, Amazon pays more than the costs needed to power them, resulting in surplus revenues that utilities can use to modernize the power grid, which improves reliability for the benefit of all customers. PG&E has stated that each new gigawatt of data center demand could reduce the average household electricity bill by 1% to 2%. The utility recently announced that they have cut electric rates by 11% since 2024 because of new load from data centers.
Amazon data centers are designed with redundancy for water, power, telecommunications, and internet connectivity to maintain continuous operations in an emergency. The Gilroy facility will deploy batteries to maintain operations during a power outage. The battery systems have undergone extensive testing and rely on multiple monitoring systems to ensure the highest standards throughout battery system installation and operations.
Environment
Amazon’s data centers will comply with all applicable sound regulations. Throughout design and construction of the Gilroy data center site, Amazon partners with acoustic engineers to keep sound levels low and ensure the facility fits comfortably within the surrounding community.
Amazon works closely with regulatory agencies throughout the planning, construction, and operational phases to ensure full compliance with all applicable environmental and public health standards. Environmental standards are enforced through multiple layers of oversight, including permitting processes with state and local environmental agencies, ongoing monitoring and reporting requirements, and regular inspections.
Submit A New Question
If you can’t find the info above, submit a question.
We review all questions submitted through this form. Because we receive a high volume of inquiries, we may not be able to respond to every question individually. Instead, we will group common themes and questions and address them through updates and FAQs on this website, where responses will be shared on a rolling basis.
Want To Learn Even More?
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