Microsoft Mount Pleasant (Fairwater Wisconsin)
"Wisconsin taxpayers borrowed about $900 million for a Foxconn factory that never came. Now it hosts an AI supercomputer."
4800 90TH ST · MOUNT PLEASANT, Richland County, WI
Source: Primary source
Microsoft Mount Pleasant (Fairwater Wisconsin) is a under construction data center in Richland County, WI, operated by Microsoft Corporation. DataCentersExposed has documented 450 MW of reported power capacity, a 1,200,000 sq ft footprint and 1 tracked EPA enforcement record at this site.
Reporting by Eric Keller · Updated Jun 18, 2026
Overview
source: linkMicrosoft's Mount Pleasant campus sits on the former Foxconn site in Racine County, Wisconsin. The 2017 Foxconn deal, celebrated at a White House groundbreaking, promised $10 billion and 13,000 jobs in exchange for nearly $4 billion in incentives, and delivered almost nothing, leaving the village and county roughly $900 million in infrastructure debt. Microsoft bought the prepared land in 2023.
Microsoft has since pledged more than $7 billion and built "Fairwater," which it calls the world's most powerful AI datacenter, packed with Nvidia GB200 GPUs and linked by fiber to a sister site in Atlanta to act as a single AI superfactory. The taxpayers who bankrolled a factory that never arrived now host one of the most powerful computers on the planet, for a company that put in no new public money.
The bills follow. We Energies plans more than $2 billion in new gas plants largely to serve Microsoft and a nearby OpenAI and Oracle campus, and in April 2026 state regulators made data centers cover the full cost of their new generation. The site runs under Foxconn's Great Lakes water diversion, up to 7 million gallons a day, with records showing up to 8.4 million gallons a year used, and Wisconsin's data-center tax exemption is projected to forgo more than $2 billion.
Operator chain
- Ultimate parentMicrosoft Corporation
- Files asMicrosoft Corporation
- This facilityMicrosoft Mount Pleasant (Fairwater Wisconsin)
The grid behind this site, right now
source: MISO · gridstatus- Natural Gas34.4%
- Coal32.8%
- Solar15.4%
- Nuclear10.2%
- Wind4.1%
- Other2.2%
- Imports0.9%
Real-time generation mix for the MISO grid this site draws from, as of Aug 17, 2026, 8:05 PM. ISO-wide, not this facility's own metering. Source: gridstatus.
Grid & water — why here
source: HIFLD · EPAThe closest existing grid infrastructure and the municipal water system this location sits in — the same constraints the buildout model screens on (it won't site a campus more than ~2 km from a substation or ~5 km from municipal water). Distances are straight-line to public HIFLD/EPA features, not a metered connection.
In the news
source: GDELT- Microsoft to stop using NDAs with local governments for data center development - WPRWPR· Mar 20, 2026
- Mount Pleasant approves site plans for Microsoft data center expansion - WPRWPR· Jan 28, 2026
- Microsoft wants to build 15 more data centers in Mount Pleasant - WPRWPR· Jan 20, 2026
- Microsoft president says he would support a Wisconsin law to regulate data centers - WPRWPR· Jan 14, 2026
Tax breaks & subsidies
source: Good Jobs First / GASB 77These tax breaks are recorded to Microsoft Corporation (the operator/parent) and may cover this or other sites — no state names the recipient at the facility level.
- Qualified Data Center Sales Tax ExemptionTax break$0State of Wisconsin · granted 2023 · term — yr · source
Wisconsin reported $40M in Qualified Data Centers sales/use tax exemption (Wis. Stat. § 77.54(70)) for FY2024 (Wisconsin Department of Revenue). Program-wide, not attributable to this site.
Water use
No measured record exists, so this is a low-confidence model from 75 MW (interconnection capacity): 1.2 L/kWh cooling (cool climate) + 0.55 gal/kWh embedded in MISO grid mix. How we estimate. Have a utility document? Send it and we'll replace this with the real figure.
EPA permits & violations
source: EPA ECHO- Clean Air Actno penaltyformal · reported 2025-07-31
Environmental permits
source: Permit register- Clean Air Act permitted sourceWI0000005510130249NAICS 518210; ECHO compliance status: Violation w/in 1 Year
Air quality near this site
source: AirNowAir Quality Index from the nearest AirNow reporting area (Kenosha-Racine Lakeside), as of 2026-06-10. Regional context — not this facility's own emissions.
Who lives nearby
source: Census ACS 2023Demographics of the census tract this facility sits in (American Community Survey 5-year estimates). Environmental-justice context for who bears the local impacts.
Nearest school
source: HIFLD / NCESThe nearest public school, Schulte Elementary in Sturtevant, is 1.2 mi from this site (313 students).
Schools are sensitive receptors for the noise, backup-generator exhaust, and traffic a large data center brings. Straight-line distance to the nearest public school (HIFLD/NCES, US public schools only).
Hearings timeline
No public-hearing records linked to this site yet. We surface planning-commission and board-of-supervisors dates when a record names a facility. If you know of a hearing on this site, tell us.