COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — Google is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on one of it's largest facilities in the world, which happens to be in Iowa.
The tech giant is investing $350 million dollars to expand it's data center in Council Bluffs, which is about 4 and a half hours west of the Quad Cities. This location helps power popular digital services, that most people use everyday, like email and internet searches for people all around the world.
This is on top of the $5 billion the company has spent on the Iowa data center, since it opened in 2007.
Google's server operations lead for Iowa and Nebraska Allie Hopkins says the expansion is to support the growth in artificial intelligence and Google Cloud.
"The cloud business is just growing so incredibly," Hopkins said. "So we need to expand to be able to continue to serve that need. And the other is AI and ML, and anybody paying attention to the news, I'm sure you've heard tons about it, right? This is super important, not just for our internal products and services, but what we are offering in the public as well."
Hopkins also said this expansion will mean more buildings, jobs, and more support to keep those buildings running smoothly. The location will also store thousands of servers.
"We're already creating more jobs today with this expansion, because of the construction," Hopkins said. "And that's going to be multi-year type of investment or opportunity for those construction jobs, just to get the infrastructure in place. And then the you know, a natural assumption after that is we'll have more needs for jobs for everything else."
Those jobs will be on top of the more than 900 jobs Google has already created since breaking ground in Iowa more than a decade ago. Some of those jobs include engineering and food services.
Google is also granting $250,000 to support a first-ever co-working space in the Council Bluffs area, where people can come together and share their expertise and explore new ideas.