Google plans to invest more than $400 million in Nevada this year to support its data center campuses in Story and Clark counties, the company announced Tuesday.
The investment will help meet growing demand for Google Cloud, AI innovations and other digital products and services, Joe Cava, Google’s vice president of data centers, said at the investment announcement event at UNR.
The new funding brings Google’s total investment in the state to more than $2.2 billion since 2019, when the company built its first Nevada data center in Clark County. The company opened a data center in Story County in 2021.
Google says its operations generated $6.97 billion in economic activity in Nevada in 2023.
“Google’s continued investment is critical to our growing tech hub across our state,” Republican Gov. Joe Lombard said in a press release.
At the event, Lombard thanked UNR Chancellor and former Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval for his support of the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, where Google’s Northern Nevada data center is located, adding that he looks forward to continuing to work with Google to drive innovation in the state.
Sandoval called Lombardo “the right leader at the right time to lead Nevada into its next phase.”
“We’ve been talking for a long time about making Nevada a new state, a tech innovation hub for the world,” Sandoval said.
In 2020, Google committed to investing $600 million in its data centers in Nevada.
That year, the country’s digital economy accounted for roughly 10% of gross domestic product and created 7.8 million jobs.
Google also announced Tuesday that it will donate $500,000 to the National Forest Foundation to increase resilience in the Truckee River watershed and reduce wildfire risk in the Tahoe National Forest. The project will involve clearing forests and removing fuels to conserve moisture in the watershed and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires.
Lombardo called the project “great” and noted the need for continued fuel reductions, especially considering the recent difficulties some Nevadans have had obtaining home insurance due to the increase in large wildfires plaguing the West.
Google is also investing more than $4.7 million in water management projects in the Las Vegas Valley and the lower Colorado River basin.
Google is pursuing a goal of running on carbon-free energy by 2030. The company has contracted with utility companies to bring more than 450 megawatts of new clean energy to the state.
