Amazon Web Services previously acquired land and a Talen Energy facility near the Susquehanna nuclear plant
In sum – what to know:
Historic investment – This investment commitment by Amazon marks the largest private-sector investment in Pennsylvania’s history, with innovation campuses planned in Salem and Falls Townships.
AI-powered job growth – Over 1,250 high-skilled roles and thousands of supply chain jobs are expected, alongside long-term data center expansion across the state.
Energy + infrastructure – Amazon Web Services aims to pair AI infrastructure with renewable and nuclear energy, despite regulatory hurdles blocking its initial colocation plans with Talen Energy.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is making a major commitment to Pennsylvania, pledging $20 billion to expand AI infrastructure across the state. The investment includes the creation of new innovation campuses in Salem Township and Falls Township, with additional sites under review for future expansion.
The initiative is expected to create 1,250 high-skilled jobs directly, along with thousands more in the data center supply chain. Governor Josh Shapiro said that this planned investment would be the largest private-sector investment in Pennsylvania’s history.
“This initial investment from Amazon will create thousands of stable jobs as Pennsylvania workers build, maintain and operate the first two data center campuses in Luzerne County and Bucks County,” said Shapiro.
Amazon noted that the investment reinforces its commitment to advancing AI innovation and supporting economic development.
The Salem Township campus will span 15 data center buildings over the next decade. AWS previously acquired land and a Talen Energy facility near the Susquehanna nuclear plant, with the aim of pairing clean energy with AI infrastructure. A proposed colocation agreement with the plant was blocked by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), a decision upheld in April 2025.
Meanwhile, Falls Township has signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for a potential data center at the Keystone Trade Center. AWS is also bolstering its renewables portfolio in Pennsylvania with 12 solar farms and additional on-site solar projects.
The news comes just days after AWS announced a $10 billion investment in North Carolina, signaling a rapid expansion of its data center footprint across the U.S.
In North Carolina, Amazon aims to expand its data center infrastructure to support AI and cloud computing technologies. The investment is expected to create at least 500 new high-skilled jobs while supporting thousands of other jobs in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center supply chain.
The company said generative AI is driving increased demand for advanced cloud infrastructure and compute power, adding that its investment will support the future of AI from AWS data centers in North Carolina. The new cloud infrastructure will strengthen North Carolina’s position as an innovation hub, Amazon said.
Amazon is set to invest nearly $100 billion in AWS infrastructure this year. In the final quarter of 2024 alone, the company allocated $26.3 billion to AI-related infrastructure. According to CEO Andy Jassy, similar spending levels are expected each quarter throughout 2025, totaling approximately $100 billion for the year.
“The vast majority of that capex is on AI for AWS,” Jassy noted during a previous earnings call. “AI represents, for sure, the biggest opportunity since cloud, and probably the biggest technology shift in business since the internet. So, I think that both our business, our customers and shareholders will be happy, medium to long-term, that we’re pursuing the capital opportunity and the business opportunity in AI.”
AWS and HUMAIN — a new Saudi company leading AI development in the country — have recently announced a major partnership to invest more than $5 billion in the field of AI.
The collaboration will help build a special “AI Zone” in Saudi Arabia and drive AI adoption across the region and the world.
AWS noted that this new AI Zone will feature cutting-edge AWS infrastructure, including high-performance servers, advanced semiconductors and UltraCluster networking to speed up AI training and inference. It will also offer AWS services like SageMaker, Bedrock and Amazon Q, which help organizations build and run generative AI (gen AI) applications.