Bloomberg reported yesterday that Noelle Walsh, Microsoft’s President of Cloud Operations and Innovation, was unequivocal at the BloombergNEF conference in Houston: the company does not want other electricity users to foot the bill for its expansion; it will absorb the related power costs itself and will not ask for government subsidies. The remarks directly addressed local residents’ concerns that data centers are competing for power and driving up residential electricity prices, and put the old question of "who pays for AI infrastructure’s electricity?" on the table.
A Hundred-Billion-Dollar Cash Bet on the Compute FoundationThe confidence comes from the budget. Microsoft plans to spend $117 billion (about RMB 782.1 billion) this year to build out related computing capacity, a scale far beyond ordinary tech infrastructure. Walsh repeatedly invoked "community first," stressing that projects must truly benefit local residents, rather than leaving them only with server rooms and power consumption. As data centers draw scrutiny in many parts of the U.S., she repeatedly reiterated that growth should not shift costs onto others.
Texas Project Stuck at the Approval GateThe most cutting-edge proving ground is in West Texas. Microsoft has teamed up with Chevron and Joulent, incubated by Engine No. 1, to advance a large data center and supporting power project codenamed "Project Kilby." Unfortunately, the area happened to be under an order suspending approvals for new data centers, so the project’s progress has been blocked at the door. Chevron still aims to start in 2028 and reach full operation in 2031, and its head of new energy business declared: Only projects that bring jobs and stable tax revenue and deliver net benefits to the community can survive; otherwise, they are doomed to fail.
