Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen and Richard Blumenthal released on October 9 a report titled “Power and Profits: How the AI Data Center Boom Costs Households and Communities,” the product of a nearly yearlong inquiry launched December 15, 2025 with information requests to Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, CoreWeave, Digital Realty and Equinix. The report’s headline findings are that the companies are not paying their “fair share” of development costs, aggressively seek tax subsidies, and provide little evidence of lasting economic benefits for host communities.
On jobs, none of the seven companies could offer comprehensive quantitative evidence on full-time employment at their facilities, the senators said. Developers routinely cite construction employment when requesting incentives, but the few firms that disclosed permanent staffing pointed to a ratio of roughly one worker per megawatt of capacity, meaning a 100-megawatt site, drawing about as much electricity as 100,000 homes, employs about 100 people once construction ends. On costs, the companies’ pledges to pay their “full energy costs” refer only to infrastructure benefiting them exclusively, the report says; they broadly opposed “but-for” allocation standards that would make them pay for shared grid upgrades that would not have been needed without their facilities, arguing those costs should be spread across all ratepayers.
On secrecy, all four Big Tech firms routinely request nondisclosure agreements from utilities, landowners and in some cases government officials, and several acknowledged that the goal is to limit public scrutiny of projects. Meta told investigators that confidentiality “increases efficiency and speed” by letting stakeholders focus on project needs. On taxes, the report says sales-tax exemptions on chips and other equipment are the most valuable incentive the companies pursue, worth billions in lost state revenue. The senators conclude the industry is “bulldozing local communities” and leaving citizens “stuck with the bills.” The report carries no enforcement action; the senators say it will feed a broader congressional effort on data center guardrails next year.