Exclusive: Senate Investigation Challenges Big Tech’s Case for AI Data Centers

Tech executives pose for a photo during a ceremony at River Bend, Hut 8's AI data center campus under construction in Saint Francisville, La., on Oct.

5, 2026 . —Kathleen Flynn/Getty Images As the world's biggest technology companies race to build data centers across the country to power an AI boom , a yearlong Senate investigation argues that some firms are misleading the public about the true costs and benefits around those projects.

The findings, first shared with TIME, are expected to be part of a broader effort in the coming year by members of Congress hoping to put more guardrails around the massive, power-intensive projects.

“Congress must hold Big Tech accountable so these companies pay their fair share,” says Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who has called for a national moratorium on new AI data centers until developers agree to cover the full costs.

Warren's office led the investigation with fellow Democratic Senators Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, which focused on seven major data center developers—Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, CoreWeave, Digital Realty, and Equinix.

The senators’ staff requested information from each company and interviewed employees.

The findings, which largely match reporting from various news outlets over the past year, offer a detailed look at the increasingly contentious economics of the AI buildout.

Data center companies routinely point to construction employment when making the case for incentives.

But when the senators’ staff asked for comprehensive information about permanent employment, several of the companies refused to provide it, according to the report.

Some companies told investigators that permanent staffing was roughly one worker for every megawatt of power demand.

A 100-megawatt data center, by that measure, could consume roughly as much electricity as 100,000 homes while employing about 100 permanent workers after construction.

“This report lays bare what we have long known: working Americans and local communities are footing the bill for Big Tech’s massive expansion of data centers, while these companies continue to operate without transparency,” Van Hollen says.

Notably, the Senate investigators found that the most lucrative incentives for data center developers are not necessarily the attention-grabbing property-tax breaks, but sales-tax exemptions on computer equipment.

AI facilities require vast quantities of specialized hardware, and GPUs account for an estimated 39% of the spending at an average 1-gigawatt AI data center, according to the report.