The greater Reno area — the Biggest Little City in the World — has rapidly become one of the largest data

In the high desert east of Reno, Nevada, construction crews are flattening the golden foothills of the Virginia Range, laying the foundations of a data center city.

Google, Tract, Switch, EdgeCore, Novva, Vantage, and PowerHouse are all operating, building, or expanding huge facilities within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, a business park bigger than the city of Detroit.

Meanwhile, Microsoft acquired more than 225 acres of undeveloped property within the center and an even larger plot in nearby Silver Springs, Nevada. Apple is expanding its data center, located just across the Truckee River from the industrial park. OpenAI has said it’s considering building a data center in Nevada as well.

The corporate race to amass computing resources to train and run artificial intelligence models