On October 9, 2026, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen and Richard Blumenthal announced a report saying none of seven companies supplied comprehensive quantitative evidence on full-time job creation at their data centers. Their inquiry also examined who pays for power infrastructure, equipment tax incentives and nondisclosure agreements, according to the senators’ announcement.
A nearly yearlong Senate inquiry
The 27-page report, Power and Profits: How the AI Data Center Boom Costs Households and Communities, followed an inquiry the senators described as nearly a year long. They said they began by sending information requests to seven data-center companies on December 15, 2025.
What the senators said about permanent jobs
The companies named in the inquiry were Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, CoreWeave, Digital Realty and Equinix. The senators said none provided comprehensive quantitative evidence about full-time jobs at its facilities—a finding about the completeness of the data, not a statement that every company supplied no employment figures at all.
Who pays for power infrastructure?
The senators said companies’ commitments to cover their “full energy costs” and “full cost of service” applied to infrastructure that benefited them exclusively. They also said companies broadly opposed a “but-for” approach to shared grid upgrades: under that approach, a developer would pay the full cost of an upgrade that would not have been needed without its data center. The companies argued that those costs should be shared among ratepayers.
That distinction puts the focus on who pays when new demand calls for grid work that can serve more than one customer. A commitment covering infrastructure that benefits a company exclusively does not, by itself, settle how the cost of shared upgrades is divided.
Tax breaks and project confidentiality
The senators said developers continued to seek sales-tax exemptions for chips and other equipment. They also said four Big Tech companies discussed in the inquiry routinely request nondisclosure agreements in commercial relationships, and that some acknowledged requesting them from public officials to limit public scrutiny.
Meta defended confidentiality during project development, saying it can improve efficiency and speed by keeping stakeholders focused on a proposed project’s needs.
