NE: Google Announces $1.2B Investment for New Lincoln Data Center, Additions to Papillion Location

Google is adding on to its Papillion data center and building a third data center in the state, in Lincoln. The two projects will total $1.2 billion in investment in Nebraska, the company said.

Work is under way for the Lincoln data center; 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, reports KMTV.

The computers at Google's data centers and the new ones on the way support the company's everyday tools, including Gmail, Maps and YouTube, said Allie Hopkins, the server lead for Nebraska and Iowa data centers. "But it's also to really increase that advancement of AI (artificial intelligence) that's really, really important."

"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," said Congressman Mike Flood. "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, reports KMTV.