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The commitments address secrecy and local benefits as opposition threatens construction. Whether Amazon’s disclosure policy also covers contractors remains unanswered.
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The policy shift comes amid mounting local resistance to data-center construction and scrutiny of how companies negotiate with host communities. Amazon’s five-year, $1 billion pledge is earmarked for community college, workforce training and energy-efficiency programs. But the commitment’s reach is unclear: Amazon has not said whether its no-NDA policy covers contractors, which can negotiate on a company’s behalf and may still restrict what local officials can disclose.
More than 100 data-center moratoriums are being considered nationwide, Garman said, warning that they could weaken the U.S. position in AI competition.
In Wharton County, Texas, an official signed an NDA with VisionFirst Advisors that concealed details of an Amazon project.
Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Delaware have issued executive orders targeting data-center NDAs.
Amazon says it no longer uses nondisclosure agreements with county officials negotiating data-center arrangements. In an October 2 blog post, Matt Garman paired that policy with a pledge to invest $1 billion over five years in host communities, while acknowledging that local backlash is hampering the AI buildout.
A nondisclosure agreement, or NDA, restricts what its signer can share. In data-center negotiations, those restrictions can prevent local officials from telling residents about a project’s energy and water use. Some agreements also conceal the identity of the technology company behind a proposed facility, according to WIRED.
In Tucson, Arizona, a local outlet used a public-records request last year to identify Amazon as the tenant of a controversial data center. An NDA had prevented county officials from naming the end tenant. Amazon has since left that project.
In South Bend, Indiana, where Amazon has invested more than $13 billion in a data-center campus, some elected officials have said local government employees could not answer project questions because they had signed NDAs with the company.
The company that eventually occupies a data center is not always the company negotiating directly with local government. Contractors can be the ones signing confidentiality agreements.
WIRED relayed Houston Chronicle reporting from September that a senior Wharton County, Texas, official signed an NDA with VisionFirst Advisors, not Amazon. It prevented him from sharing details about an Amazon project. Amazon did not answer WIRED’s question about whether its NDA commitment extends to contractors.
Right now there are over 100 data center moratoriums being considered across the country.
Matt Garman, in the October 2 blog post quoted by WIRED
Garman warned that enacting those moratoriums could damage the United States’ position in AI competition. Amazon’s planned community spending will support:
Governors in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Delaware have cracked down on data-center NDAs through executive orders. A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has introduced the No Secrets for Data Centers Act.
Earlier this week, Representative Jamie Raskin, a sponsor of the bill, requested information from Amazon, Google, Meta and Oracle about their data-center NDAs. Amazon told The Wall Street Journal it was no longer using them, according to WIRED.
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