PAPILLION, Neb. (KMTV) — Google announced on Tuesday it is adding on to its Papillion data center and building a third data center in the state, in Lincoln.
Altogether, the projects will total $1.2 billion in investment in Nebraska, Google said.
The Lincoln data center will be north of I-80 and west of U.S. 77. Work is already underway.
The Papillion site broke ground in 2019. Another Nebraska data center in Northwest Omaha near State Street and Blair High Road will be operational soon, the company said.
Two weeks ago, Google announced a $350 million expansion to a Council Bluffs data center.
Learn more: Google announces $350 million investment in Council Bluffs data center
The computers at Google's data centers and the new ones on the way support the company's everyday tools, said Allie Hopkins, the server lead for Nebraska and Iowa data centers. That includes Gmail, Maps, and YouTube, for example.
"But it's also to really increase that advancement of AI (artificial intelligence) that's really, really important," she said.
Congressman Mike Flood (NE-01) joked Google is "handing out these data centers like candy."
"I would like one in Fremont, Columbus and Norfolk," he said.
While AI is just part of what might happen at the new and expanded data centers (Google is tight-lipped on what the computers at its centers handle specifically), Flood was optimistic about Google's AI potential.
"Facilities like this will aggregate data from all over the world and solve medical issues, and predict where fires are gonna burn, and how flooding is gonna affect people," he said. "There's gonna be a lot of applications that are gonna run through this center right here in Papillion that will affect people around the world. Certainly, there's also some concerns with AI that Congress needs to address, especially in areas like defense and health care .... At the end of the day, this puts Nebraska right in the middle of everything."
Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird said the Lincoln project was years in the making.
"For the past four years since I walked into the doors of city hall as mayor, we've been having to call this 'Project Agate,'" she said. "Like a polished rock. It just seems somehow underwhelming compared to the amazing magnitude of this investment."
Google says it's already invested $2.2 billion in Nebraska. It won't say how much of the $1.2 billion is going to Lincoln and how much to Papillion, but they said all of it will be invested this year.
RELATED: Google announces $350 million investment in Council Bluffs data center
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