New Delhi: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella responded to an essay on X by the company’s Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, enumerating the benefits of the company’s first datacentre to Quincy — the Washington town that houses it.
“Quincy, Washington shows what’s possible when you build datacenters with communities, and grow together over time,” Nadella said, supporting Smith.
Built in 2006, the complex, located about two-and-a-half hours east of Seattle, was the first such project designed, built and owned by Microsoft. Initially known as a “server farm,” the centre laid the foundations of the cloud computing infrastructure that powers the digital services running the world.
The rural town of Quincy has grown more than 40 per cent in the last 20 years, outpacing the growth of even Seattle, the essay claims. While poverty rates have been cut in half, the property-tax revenue from the county has grown twelve-fold. The revenue thus collected has helped fund a new school, library, hospital and city hall, and is slated to pay for a future aquatics centre.
Dispelling accusations that datacentres bring “nothing but a wave of temporary construction jobs,” Smith maintains that the tech giant has sustained 1,200 construction jobs in the town for the last two decades by building new datacentres and refurbishing existing ones. Additionally, he says, the datacentre employs close to 700 employees in non-construction operational roles.
Smith also elaborated on the responsible ways in which the site uses the resources that the local community depends on.
“We built a water reuse facility that recirculates cooling water back for reuse so we reduce our reliance on local resources,” he wrote. “And our carbon-free hydro, solar and wind help power our datacenter operations.”
Quincy, Washington shows what’s possible when you build datacenters with communities, and grow together over time. https://t.co/TqJdhJMr3z
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) September 13, 2026
‘Special rural character’
In terms of healthcare, the complex has helped its employees and their families with its healthcare benefits programme. Additionally, tax revenue from its operations has also funded more than half of the bond for the Quincy Valley Medical Center, the essay says.
The datacentre has also gone beyond its immediate employees to benefit the broader Quincy community by building Washington state’s first high school datacentre technician programme, in connection with the town’s Big Bend Community College. Quincy’s schools became a role model for success with their Microsoft Elevate Washington programme bringing AI skills to 1,00,000 educators worldwide.
Smith also cited the example of a young technician whose job at Microsoft allowed him to buy a new house for his parents.
He mentions a Microsoft manager who not only mentors student athletes in the town, but also puts their company’s non-profit match towards the team’s equipment and uniforms.
“Last year, more than half our employees in the Quincy region used our dollar-for-dollar giving match and the $25-per-hour match for volunteer time to support the causes they care about,” Smith wrote. “In the last two years, our local employees volunteered 4,363 hours and, with the company match, donated more than $270,000 to 57 local nonprofits.”
Finally, Smith proposes that Quincy has provided an important part of the blueprint for Microsoft’s Community-First AI Infrastructure Initiative, launched in January this year. The initiative commits the company to focus on five priorities that the local residents around a datacentre care about.
These include: electricity, water, jobs, taxes, and community investments. Microsoft hopes to take its learnings from Quincy and apply it to 19 communities across 16 states across the US.
Despite the changes, Quincy has retained its “special rural character”, Smith said.
“The city has managed growth well. When Microsoft brought the first datacenter to town, Quincy had only a single stoplight. Now it has two,” he wrote.
(Edited by Stela Dey)