Microsoft announced plans to purchase approximately 3,200 acres south of Cheyenne — tripling its physical footprint in the area. The company has been operating data centers there since 2012 and was the No. 1 city taxpayer and No. 2 county taxpayer in 2025, contributing over $11 million to the local tax base. The 3,000-acre tract involves property owned by Sen. Cynthia Lummis' family through Old Horse Pasture Inc. and Arp and Hammond Hardware Co.
The detail that matters most for other communities: Cheyenne uses a Large Power Contract Service tariff — a rate structure where large electricity customers like data centers pay for all necessary infrastructure upgrades, including new generation, transmission, and substations. Residential and small business customers are explicitly protected from data center-driven cost increases. According to the Smart Electric Power Alliance, 60 utilities in 36 states now have or are developing similar large-load tariffs.
Microsoft employs about 220 full-time workers across its existing centers and has trained more than 1,000 students through a Datacenter Academy at Laramie County Community College. The company says current data centers use 1.2% of city water and new facilities will use closed-loop cooling.