Amazon to invest another 18bn euros in Spain data centres

BARCELONA: Amazon on Monday announced another 18 billion euros ($21 billion) of investment in data centre projects in Spain, more than doubling its spending there on the infrastructure crucial for artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

The total of 33.7 billion in investments through to 2035 would support almost 30,000 jobs, Amazon said in a statement released during the Mobile World Congress telecoms trade fair in Barcelona.

Cash will flow “to expand and support data infrastructure, delivering advanced artificial intelligence and cloud computing capabilities to organisations across Europe,” the company added.

The US tech giant had already committed 15.7 billion euros in 2024 to expand data centres in the northeastern Spanish region of Aragon.

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“In a world filled with uncertainty, our country is a safe bet,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez posted to the X social network after meeting Amazon representatives at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) telecoms trade fair in Barcelona.

While large, the sums involved in the Spanish investment pale in comparison to the hundreds of billions AI and cloud giants including Amazon, Microsoft, Google and OpenAI plan to spend on computing infrastructure in the coming years.

The upped investment nevertheless marks “a long-term bet on Spain,” Amazon’s chief global affairs and legal officer David Zapolsky said in the statement.

Aragon is sparsely populated and benefits from strong sunshine and wind, making it a popular site for solar parks and wind farms – two renewable energy sources that have surged in Spain in recent years.

Local leaders hope the energy boon can help make the region a hub for the data centres needed to power generative artificial intelligence.

Amazon’s investment comes as European countries are debating fiercely over the need for tech sovereignty, with some warning especially against relying on American giants for storing or processing data in the cloud.

The vast majority of cloud services aimed at European governments are controlled by Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft, with local alternatives struggling to take root.