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Amazon announced on Friday that it will no longer require nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) with government agencies involved in its data center projects. This decision is part of a new Data Center Commitment program designed to increase transparency and address opposition to AI infrastructure. The company also unveiled plans to invest more than $1 billion over five years in communities hosting its facilities. These announcements come as more than 100 data center moratoriums are being considered across the U.S., prompting Amazon to make its projects more attractive to locals through open houses, early information disclosure, and listening to local concerns.

Regarding resource usage, Amazon reports a global power usage efficiency (PUE) of 1.14 for 2025, compared with an industry average of 1.25 and 1.63 for on-premises enterprise data centers. It states its facilities are seven times more water-efficient than the industry average and has reached 75% of its goal to become water-positive by 2030. New sites will use backup generators compliant with EPA Tier 4 emissions standards, though Amazon does not specify which generator classes it intends to deploy. While an average U.S. data center consumes around 170,000 gallons of water per day, Amazon claims its facilities use less than 13,000 gallons, equivalent to 42 U.S. households. However, the company does not distinguish between general-purpose cloud workloads and power-hungry AI accelerators, which have different cooling requirements.

To support local communities, the new Built Together initiative will add more than $1 billion to Amazon’s existing community spending. The company expects to provide access to free community-college education for over 300,000 students over five years through Modular Training Centers that can train roughly 2,000 to 4,000 people annually. By the end of 2028, Amazon targets training as many as 100,000 workers per year. Additionally, energy-efficiency upgrades are planned for more than 300 schools and community buildings, targeting energy-bill reductions of 20% to 40%. Separately, more than 65 contracted water projects are expected to return over 8 billion gallons annually, more than twice the water Amazon says its data centers consumed in 2025.