Microsoft Fairwater
Microsoft Fairwater
One-line summary: Microsoft's purpose-built AI "superfactory" campuses — Wisconsin-1 fully operational Jun 23, 2026 after a May 2024 announce (~25 months); Atlanta "began operation in October" (year not restated on the fetched page). No official campus MW or GPU count.
What it is
Microsoft's Fairwater network: a two-story, almost-zero-water liquid-cooled GB200 NVL72 design with a dedicated AI WAN, described as scaling to hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs across the Fairwater network — not a per-campus count. From 2026-08-27-xai-data-center-build-tempo-vs-peers-and-ai-campus-capacity.
Why it matters to stock-market
Fairwater is the official greenfield / purpose-built peer clock against colossus's reused-shell cluster clocks. The Wisconsin announced-to-operational span is closer to SpaceX's own "~2 years for a 100 MW greenfield" benchmark than to Colossus's 122-day cluster clock. Not an apples-to-apples MW comparison: Microsoft published no MW. See colossus-cluster-clocks.
Key facts
- Mount Pleasant, WI first facility: announced May 2024; equipment online / startup April; fully operational Jun 23, 2026; "ahead of schedule"; ~10,000 construction workers "over the past two years"; second adjacent building scheduled 2028. No MW, no GPU count. From 2026-08-27-xai-data-center-build-tempo-vs-peers-and-ai-campus-capacity (Microsoft Source, Jun 23, 2026).
- Atlanta: "began operation in October" — year not restated on the fetched page; industry recaps saying 2025 are not treated as fetched. From 2026-08-27-xai-data-center-build-tempo-vs-peers-and-ai-campus-capacity.
- Third-party 340 / 700 MW Atlanta figures were search-only — not used. Campus MW left blank. From 2026-08-27-xai-data-center-build-tempo-vs-peers-and-ai-campus-capacity.
- More U.S. Fairwater sites described as "under construction," no MW. From 2026-08-27-xai-data-center-build-tempo-vs-peers-and-ai-campus-capacity.
Open questions
- Official Fairwater MW (any campus)?
- Atlanta operational year on a fetched Microsoft page?