AI data centers

Do AI data centers use water?

Water-sourcing on the record for tracked campuses

Yes. Most use water to stay cool. But how much they use, and where it comes from, is different at almost every site.

A data center is a building full of computers, and computers make heat. Water is a cheap way to carry that heat away, so most data centers use some.

A growing number, though, are built to use almost none.

The numbers about how much water gets used come from outside research, and we point to it.

What we track that almost no one else does is how each data center we follow gets its cooling water. Most of the ones that say how they cool are built to use very little.

✓ Last verified not yet on record5 sources

Find out instantly when it changes.

Yes. A data center is packed with computers, and computers give off heat. Water is a cheap way to carry that heat away, so most data centers use some.

But many new ones are built to use almost none. So the real answer is not the same for every site.

There are two kinds of water use here, and people mix them up all the time.

The first is the water the building itself uses to cool down. Often it lets the water evaporate, a little like sweat.

The second is the water used far away, at the power plants that make the building's electricity. For a data center on the regular power grid, this hidden amount is usually the bigger one.

We did not measure these amounts ourselves. The numbers on this page come from outside research, and we say who did each study.

Here is the part we track that almost no one else does: how each data center we follow gets its cooling water.

Some are cooled by air, or by dry systems, and use little or no water.

Some use a closed loop. The water goes around and around in a sealed system, so it only gets topped off now and then instead of being pulled in all the time.

Some use recycled water, or even seawater, so they stay off the drinking water supply.

The table below shows each one, with a link to where the fact came from.

One thing we do not have is an exact gallons-per-year number for a single site. Companies rarely share that. So we show how each site gets its water, and we point to the research for the big numbers, instead of making one up.

How the sites we track stay cool

We track 3,975 AI data centers. For the 544 biggest campuses we also record how they handle cooling water, and 94 of those tell us. Almost no one else keeps this. It is not a gallons number. It is the cooling method, site by site, with a source for each.

Disclose their approach: 94
Air / dry, little or no water: 11
Reclaimed or seawater: 7
Water-minimizing in total: 18

What is claimed, and who says it

Each box below says who the fact comes from. The last box is the honest limit of what we can answer.

How it works (from the Congressional Research Service)

Two kinds of water use

A data center makes heat, and water helps carry it off. Some of that water is used right at the building.

More of it is used far away, at the power plants that make the building's electricity. This federal report explains both.

For a site on the regular grid, the far-away amount is often the bigger one.

Read the proof: Congressional Research Service (R49057)

How much (from LBNL, UC Riverside, and EESI)

A lot overall, and hard to measure per use

US data centers used about 4.4 percent of the country's electricity in 2023, and that could reach 6.7 to 12 percent by 2028 (LBNL).

One study found that about half a liter of water is used for every 20 to 50 ChatGPT-style questions, though the exact number depends on what you count (UC Riverside).

When a site cools by letting water evaporate, about 80 percent of that water does not come back (EESI).

These are outside estimates, not our own measurements.

Read the proof: LBNL (US DOE), UC Riverside, EESI

What one real site looked like (public records)

The Dalles, Oregon: 355 million gallons

The town of The Dalles sued to keep Google's water use secret.

After it lost, the records showed Google's data centers there used about 355 million gallons in 2021, about 29 percent of the whole town's water.

It stands out because most sites never share a number like this.

Read the proof: Data Center Dynamics / The Oregonian

What we have, and what we do not

Where the water comes from, not how much

We track how each site we follow gets its cooling water, shown below.

We do not have an exact gallons number for a single site. Companies rarely share that.

So we show where the water comes from, and we point to the research for the big totals.

Air or dry cooling, little or no water

Cooled mostly by air, so it uses little or no water.

11 tracked campuses

11 tracked campuses

Alterra Marshall Technology & Energy Center	Marshall	Air or dry cooling, little or no water	Closed-loop liquid cooling proposed to minimize water use; developer said it would not draw from Stuart Lake (reported, Dec 2025). No gpd figure sourced. Sources (3) →
Amazon Project Rainier Data Center (New Carlisle)	New Carlisle	Air or dry cooling, little or no water	Uses free-air cooling about 90% of the year, switching to evaporative (water) cooling only when ambient temperature exceeds ~85F; cooling water is drawn from the New Carlisle aquifer, with Phase 1 permitted at ~1.6M gal/day and Amazon stating water is used in under 2% of hours annually. Sources (5) →
Google Mesa Data Center (Redhawk)	Mesa	Air or dry cooling, little or no water	Air-cooled to minimize water consumption given regional water scarcity (Google) Sources (2) →
Meta Beaver Dam Data Center	Beaver Dam	Air or dry cooling, little or no water	Dry cooling; Meta states no water demand for cooling once operational, with water restoration returning 100% of consumed water to local watersheds. Sources (2) →
Meta Hyperion Data Center (Richland Parish)	Delhi	Air or dry cooling, little or no water	Operator describes a closed-loop system circulating a glycol mixture through the data halls, with heat rejected via dry cooling for the majority of the year; a water permit is reported at roughly 23 MGD across six wells sized to peak-summer demand. Sources (9) →
Microsoft Fairwater Data Center (Mount Pleasant)	Mount Pleasant	Air or dry cooling, little or no water	Closed-loop liquid cooling filled once at construction with no ongoing water draw and no evaporation across about 90% of capacity; the remaining ~10% uses outdoor-air cooling and taps water only during peak summer heat. Microsoft compares annual water use to a single restaurant. Sources (4) →
Polaris Forge 1 (Ellendale)	Ellendale	Air or dry cooling, little or no water	Applied Digital proprietary closed-loop / waterless cooling design. Sources (3) →
Polaris Forge 2 (Harwood)	Harwood	Air or dry cooling, little or no water	Applied Digital proprietary closed-loop / waterless cooling design. Sources (3) →
Project Cardinal Data Center Campus — Yorkville	Yorkville	Air or dry cooling, little or no water	Domestic use quantified, cooling makeup water not yet. Burns & McDonnell, the engineer of record, told Yorkville on 5 September 2025 that domestic demand is a draft 0.17 million gallons a day on average with air-cooled chillers, or 0.25 with water-cooled chillers and dry coolers, peaking at 0.31 and 0.44 respectively on a 1.8 peaking factor. Makeup water for the closed-loop system is explicitly undetermined at this stage, depending on end-user design and water quality, and no ongoing irrigation is assumed. Fire flow is estimated at 2,000 gallons per minute minimum at 20 psi. Sources (4) →
Stratos Project (O'Leary Digital) AI Data Center & Energy Campus	Hansel Valley	Air or dry cooling, little or no water	Off-grid campus using closed-loop chilling plus dry (air-based) cooling with no continuous water draw; water only for one-time system fill and minor maintenance. Water purchased from private landowners' existing agricultural water rights, explicitly not from the Great Salt Lake (Utah Gov Office FAQ). A water-right change application was filed Mar 25, 2026 and withdrawn May 6, 2026 with intent to refile. Sources (2) →
Vantage Data Centers — Frontier (Shackelford County, TX)	Albany (Shackelford County)	Air or dry cooling, little or no water	Closed-loop chillers, with no measured figure yet. Vantage says the campus pairs air cooling with liquid-to-liquid cooling on a closed-loop chiller system and targets water use efficiency near zero. That is a design target from the operator, published before the first building opens in the second half of 2026. Sources (5) →

Closed loop, sealed and reused

The water goes around in a sealed loop and only gets topped off now and then.

17 tracked campuses

17 tracked campuses

Compass Datacenters Red Oak Campus (DFW III)	Red Oak	Closed loop, sealed and reused	Closed-loop water-cooling system that is not connected to the city utility line and, per city staff, uses less water annually than a Walmart Supercenter. Sources (3) →
Crusoe Childress Campus	Childress	Closed loop, sealed and reused	Closed-loop, non-evaporative liquid cooling to reduce water use. Sources (3) →
GW Ranch (Pacifico Energy)	Fort Stockton	Closed loop, sealed and reused	Self-supplying, per the developer. Pacifico says the power generation system is self-sufficient and will itself produce water the data center can use. Local coverage notes the general move to closed-loop cooling, which still needs a large volume on initial fill and periodic refills. No water source, volume or permit figure has been published for the campus. Sources (7) →
Galaxy Helios Campus (CoreWeave)	Afton	Closed loop, sealed and reused	Closed loop, recirculating internally. Galaxy has put a figure of roughly 3,000 gallons a day per building on the same design at its McGregor campus, which it describes as built like Helios; no separate published figure exists for Helios itself. Sources (6) →
Lake Mariner Data Campus	Barker	Closed loop, sealed and reused	Closed-loop cooling that does not draw from Lake Ontario despite the lakeside location and legacy coal-plant intake; the campus uses only a few gallons of utility water daily. Sources (4) →
Lancium Fort Stockton Clean Campus	Fort Stockton	Closed loop, sealed and reused	Closed-loop, non-evaporative liquid cooling that recirculates a sealed water volume; once filled it requires no additional water for the life of the project. Sources (4) →
Microsoft Fairwater Atlanta / QTS Fayetteville Campus	Fayetteville	Closed loop, sealed and reused	Closed-loop liquid cooling consuming almost zero water; initial fill equivalent to what 20 homes use in a year, no evaporation, ~6-year loop life (Microsoft). Grid-only, no on-site generation and no UPS/gen-sets. Sources (3) →
Nebius Independence AI Factory Campus	Independence	Closed loop, sealed and reused	Municipal water via city Courtney Bend Water Treatment plant; closed-loop cooling; one-time fill ~1M gal per 200MW building; recurring ~400,000-640,000 gal/year (city FAQ). Sources (3) →
PORTS-Pike Technology Campus (SB Energy / OpenAI)	Piketon	Closed loop, sealed and reused	Closed loop, no make-up water claimed. The cooling system recirculates rather than running evaporative towers, so after the initial fill the developer expects ongoing use comparable to an office building of similar headcount: sinks, restrooms, washdown and landscaping. That would be far below what the former gaseous diffusion plant on the site consumed. Sources (5) →
Prince William Digital Gateway (QTS + Compass)	Gainesville	Closed loop, sealed and reused	Potable public supply, with no closed-loop requirement. Prince William Water draws from the Potomac and the Occoquan Reservoir through Fairfax Water, plus a small amount from Lake Manassas. The county has no reclaimed water facilities, so every data center in it runs on drinking water; neighbouring Fauquier mandates closed-loop cooling and Prince William does not. Across the county data centers take about 4 percent of average daily demand and about 10 percent at peak, more than 4.6 million gallons in a single day. The campus itself has no published figure. Sources (4) →
Project Jade (Crusoe / Tallgrass) AI Data Center Campus	Cheyenne	Closed loop, sealed and reused	On-site deep groundwater wells drilled below the aquifers that supply Laramie County; closed-loop cooling to minimize consumption. Reported initial fill roughly equivalent to 20 households and ongoing annual use less than three households (Cowboy State Daily). Sources (2) →
Project Llano (Crusoe / Google Goodnight Campus, Claude TX)	Armstrong	Closed loop, sealed and reused	Closed-loop cooling per Sep 2026 open house (KFDA). Primary power Goodnight 1/2 wind; ERCOT backup. Sources (3) →
Stargate Abilene	Abilene	Closed loop, sealed and reused	Closed-loop, direct-to-chip water cooling with near-zero evaporation; Abilene's mayor stated the site uses roughly 10 million gallons/year, against the city's 21 to 24 million gallons/day. Sources (3) →
Stargate Doña Ana County / Project Jupiter (New Mexico)	Santa Teresa	Closed loop, sealed and reused	Closed-loop cooling; proposed domestic water use ~20,000 gallons/day; on-site microgrid targeting net-zero emissions by 2045. Sources (6) →
Stargate Lordstown (Ohio)	Lordstown	Closed loop, sealed and reused	Oracle co-CEO stated the site uses a closed-loop cooling system designed to not use water. Sources (5) →
Stargate Norway (Kvandal / Narvik)	Narvik	Closed loop, sealed and reused	Closed-loop direct-to-chip liquid cooling; excess heat available for regional low-carbon enterprises / district heating Sources (3) →
Vantage Port Washington (Lighthouse) Campus	Port Washington	Closed loop, sealed and reused	Closed-loop liquid cooling system that uses minimal water; Vantage committing a minimum of $175M to regional water/wastewater upgrades (new water tower, upgraded mains, sewer). Stated goal water-positive via restoration projects. Sources (4) →

Recycled water

Cooled with recycled water instead of drinking water.

5 tracked campuses

5 tracked campuses

AWS Madison County Data Center Campuses	Canton	Recycled water	Transitioning to recycled/treated wastewater cooling by 2027; $215M state loan funded wastewater treatment upgrades Sources (3) →
Project Kilby (Chevron / Microsoft)	Pecos	Recycled water	Brackish groundwater rather than fresh. Kilby plans to run the plant on non-potable brackish groundwater to reduce demand on shared freshwater, and Chevron says it is working towards using treated produced water for Kilby and other Permian industrial uses over the coming years, to cut groundwater withdrawals further. Sources (4) →
STACK Stafford Technology Campus	Stafford	Recycled water	Reclaimed water system for industrial cooling; project funds water/sewer upgrades eliminating $58M from Stafford County's Capital Improvement Program Sources (2) →
Switch Citadel Campus (Tahoe Reno)	McCarran (Tahoe Reno Industrial Center)	Recycled water	Supplied with reclaimed (treated effluent) water via a 16-mile pipeline from the Truckee Meadows Water Reclamation Facility; Switch states its cooling approach minimizes water dependence. Sources (4) →
xAI Colossus (Memphis)	Memphis	Recycled water	Cooled with treated wastewater (about 3 million gallons/day) piped from the purpose-built Colossus Water Recycling Plant, avoiding an equivalent draw on Memphis drinking water; on-site power is from methane gas turbines. Sources (9) →

Seawater

Cooled with seawater, so it stays off the fresh water supply.

2 tracked campuses

2 tracked campuses

DataVolt NEOM Oxagon Net-Zero AI Factory	Oxagon	Seawater	Not published. The launch announcement commits to renewable power, net zero operation and unspecified advanced cooling technologies, but names no water source and gives no volume. On a Red Sea industrial site the plausible answer is desalination, which is exactly why it should not be assumed here. Sources (3) →
Reliance Jamnagar AI-Enabled Data Centre	Jamnagar	Seawater	Cooled with desalinated seawater from the Gulf of Kutch; Meta covers full cost of energy and water for the leased block. Sources (4) →

City drinking water

Uses regular city drinking water to cool, the kind that gets the most attention.

5 tracked campuses

5 tracked campuses

D-Wave Burnaby Quantum Center of Excellence	Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada	City drinking water	Quantum annealing QPUs are cooled with dilution refrigerators (helium-3/helium-4 mixture) to roughly 10-15 mK, not water. Building HVAC uses municipal water; no disclosed process-water draw. Sources (12) →
Fermi America HyperGrid (Project Matador)	Amarillo	City drinking water	Municipal water off the Ogallala. Amarillo agreed to sell the campus 2.5 million gallons a day on a 20 year contract with two 10 year renewal options, at twice the rate a commercial user inside the city pays, and Fermi covers the cost of the two new Carson County wells the city needs to supply it. Fermi's own filing puts its expected need at up to 5.5 million gallons a day, and the city expects it back asking for that. Use is metered, but neither the water agreement nor the tax abatement says what happens if Fermi exceeds it. Sources (7) →
Google Quantum AI Campus Santa Barbara	Goleta, California, USA	City drinking water	Quantum processors are cooled in dilution refrigerators (cryostats) to roughly 10 millikelvin using helium-3/helium-4 mixtures, not chilled water. Only ancillary building HVAC would draw municipal water; no facility-scale process-water use has been disclosed. Sources (9) →
IonQ Quantum Manufacturing Facility Bothell	Bothell, Washington, USA	City drinking water	Trapped-ion quantum systems do not use large-scale water cooling; ion trap chips operate in ultra-high-vacuum chambers at near room temperature, unlike superconducting qubits that require dilution refrigerators. No municipal water-cooling loop disclosed. Sources (9) →
xAI Colossus 2 Data Center	Southaven	City drinking water	Sits too far from the wastewater plant and draws millions of gallons/day of drinking water (about 1.3M gal/day as of early 2026); xAI has announced an ~$80M treatment plant to reuse ~13M gal/day of wastewater. Powered by on-site natural gas turbines. Sources (11) →

Water noted, no single method

A sourced water note that does not fit one clean method above.

54 tracked campuses

54 tracked campuses

AWS Center for Quantum Computing Pasadena	Pasadena, California, USA	Water noted, no single method	No industrial water cooling disclosed. Quantum processors on site (Ocelot cat-qubit chip) operate in dilution refrigerators at near-absolute-zero temperatures, which use closed-cycle helium (helium-3/helium-4) rather than facility water for cryogenic cooling. Sources (9) →
Alpha Digital Campus (LandBridge / PowerBridge)	Pecos	Water noted, no single method	Not published. The announcement lists significant water availability among West Texas's advantages and says nothing further: no source, no volume, no arrangement, on a campus of about 3,400 acres. Sources (3) →
Amazon (AWS) Hermiston / Umatilla Data Center Campus	Hermiston	Water noted, no single method	Hermiston annexed 810 acres into its Urban Growth Boundary (South Hermiston Industrial Park) in Sept 2025 for future data centers. Region attractive for proximity to Columbia River water supply. Existing AWS load served via PacifiCorp. Sources (2) →
Atom Computing Boulder Quantum Facility	Boulder, Colorado, USA	Water noted, no single method	Neutral-atom quantum systems trap and cool ytterbium atoms with lasers rather than dilution refrigerators, so the facility has no significant process-water or cryogenic-water load; cooling needs are limited to conventional HVAC and laser/electronics chillers. Sources (11) →
Cayuga Data Campus	Lansing	Water noted, no single method	Existing industrial-scale water intake system at former coal plant; TeraWulf states it will NOT rely on Cayuga Lake to cool the data center Sources (2) →
Core Scientific / CoreWeave Muskogee HPC Campus	Muskogee	Water noted, no single method	Not published. Core Scientific's own page for the site talks about power, connectivity and expansion room, and mentions cooling only as one of the things the facility provides. It names no cooling method, water source or volume. Sources (7) →
Data City (Energy Abundance)	Laredo	Water noted, no single method	Not published. The launch release describes a centralised district cooling system built around direct-to-chip liquid cooling, and says nothing about where the water comes from or how much is needed, on a 50,000 acre site in a part of Texas where that is the question. Sources (2) →
Dove Creek Data Center (Beacon)	San Angelo	Water noted, no single method	Off-grid; powered by on-site natural-gas reciprocating engines (RICE). ~1,240 acres of buildable land (est. 70% of total site). Facility sited 0.25 mi south of US 67 on FM 2335, west Tom Green County. Community concerns raised over water and power; water source not specified in permit reporting. Sources (2) →
Envision Galaxy Campus	Ulanqab	Water noted, no single method	Not published. The commissioning announcement covers power in detail, naming dedicated renewable generation, transmission and large-scale storage, and says nothing at all about cooling method, water source or volume. Sources (3) →
Google Goleta Quantum AI Campus	Goleta, California, USA	Water noted, no single method	Not a water-cooled hyperscale facility. Quantum processors operate inside dilution refrigerators that use a helium-3/helium-4 mixture to reach millikelvin temperatures; conventional HVAC serves the office and cleanroom envelope. Sources (10) →
Google Pryor (MidAmerica) Data Center Campus	Pryor	Water noted, no single method	Evaporative cooling; the facility drew about 1.1 billion gallons of water in one year from the Neosho River via the MidAmerica Industrial Park, discharging ~253 million gallons back to the river with the remainder lost to evaporation (July 2024 to June 2025, via open-records request). Sources (4) →
Google The Dalles Data Center Campus	The Dalles	Water noted, no single method	2024 use ~434.4M gal/yr (~1.19M gpd), up from 104M gal/yr in 2012; underground water right up to 3.88M gpd acquired with smelter; city commitment up to 2M gpd by Jan 2028, potential 8M gpd with expansion. Retail water via City of The Dalles; subject of a 2022-2023 public-records dispute (The Oregonian). Sources (2) →
Homer City Energy Campus	Homer City	Water noted, no single method	Two Lick Creek, volume undisclosed. The creek is fed by Two Lick Reservoir, which holds 5 billion gallons at capacity. The permit application does not state how much water the plant will draw, and the operator has said it cannot answer for the campus because different data center tenants have different water needs. Sources (6) →
IBM Quantum Data Center Ehningen	Ehningen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany	Water noted, no single method	Superconducting-qubit facility; processors run inside dilution refrigerators cooled with helium-3/helium-4 mixtures to near absolute zero. No process water cooling is publicly disclosed for the quantum hardware itself. Sources (8) →
IBM Quantum Data Center Poughkeepsie	Poughkeepsie, New York, USA	Water noted, no single method	Quantum processors are cooled by Bluefors dilution refrigerators operating near 15 millikelvin (helium-3/helium-4 mixture), not by water. IBM's Project Goldeneye prototype (the largest experimental-volume dilution refrigerator built) was relocated to the Poughkeepsie site to prototype cooling for future large-scale quantum systems. Sources (9) →
IBM Quantum System One Kawasaki Japan	Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan	Water noted, no single method	No process water cooling disclosed. Quantum System One uses a closed-cycle dilution refrigerator with a helium-3/helium-4 mixture to hold the superconducting QPU near 15 mK; heat rejection is via the KBIC building's HVAC. Sources (10) →
IBM Quantum System One at Fraunhofer Institute	Ehningen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany	Water noted, no single method	Quantum processor cooled by a closed-cycle dilution refrigerator to millikelvin temperatures; no water cooling on the quantum stack. Facility HVAC/water draw for the classical control racks is not publicly disclosed. Sources (7) →
IBM Quantum System One at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute	Troy, New York, USA	Water noted, no single method	No process water cooling disclosed. IBM Quantum System One uses a closed-cycle dilution refrigerator (helium-3/helium-4) to hold the Eagle QPU near 15 millikelvin; heat rejection is via the building's HVAC, not evaporative water. Sources (8) →
IBM Quantum System One at Yonsei University	Incheon, South Korea	Water noted, no single method	No process water cooling. IBM Quantum System One uses a dilution refrigerator with liquid helium to hold the QPU near absolute zero (approximately -273 C / 15 mK). Sources (10) →
IBM Quantum System Two at Donostia International Physics Center	Donostia-San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain	Water noted, no single method	No water cooling disclosed. The Heron processors run at 10-20 millikelvin inside a dilution refrigerator, the standard cryogenic stack for IBM Quantum System Two. Sources (9) →
IQM Espoo Quantum Production Facility	Espoo, Finland	Water noted, no single method	Quantum processors operate at millikelvin temperatures inside dilution refrigerators using helium-3/helium-4 mixtures; conventional data-center water cooling does not apply. Facility is transitioning to 100% renewable district heating and installing an abatement system for direct fab emissions. Sources (10) →
IQM Munich Quantum Data Center	Munich, Bavaria, Germany	Water noted, no single method	No water cooling disclosed. Quantum systems rely on cryogenic cooling using liquid nitrogen and liquid helium; a separated service area on-site holds compressors, pumps, and liquid nitrogen/helium storage feeding dilution refrigerators. Sources (6) →
IQM US Quantum Technology Center Maryland	University of Maryland	Water noted, no single method	Quantum research facility; superconducting qubit systems rely on helium dilution-refrigerator cryogenics rather than evaporative water cooling. No facility-scale water use disclosed. Sources (8) →
Infleqtion Colorado Quantum Innovation Center	Louisville, Colorado, USA	Water noted, no single method	Neutral-atom quantum computers use ultra-high-vacuum chambers and laser cooling (magneto-optical traps) rather than dilution-refrigerator cryogenics or process water; no site-specific water/cooling footprint disclosed. Sources (7) →
Infleqtion Oxford Quantum Innovation Centre	Oxford, England, UK	Water noted, no single method	Neutral-atom quantum platform (Sqale); qubits are held in optical tweezers under ultra-high vacuum with laser cooling, so the facility does not require dilution-refrigerator helium-3 cryogenics nor significant process water for cooling. No water-use disclosure has been made. Sources (10) →
IonQ Advanced Quantum R&D Laboratory Boulder	Boulder, Colorado, USA	Water noted, no single method	Trapped-ion quantum systems use cryogenic ion-trap chambers (helium-based cryogenics), not process water cooling. No disclosed water withdrawals. Sources (7) →
MGX/Bpifrance/Nvidia/Mistral AI Campus (Bruyeres-le-Chatel)	Bruyeres-le-Chatel	Water noted, no single method	Not published for this site. The operator, Eclairion, commits across its estate to high energy and water efficiency and carbon-free energy, but publishes no cooling method, water source or volume for Bruyeres-le-Chatel specifically, which it lists at 120 MW. Sources (4) →
Matrix Data Center Campus (The Matrix Center)	Sulphur Springs	Water noted, no single method	Zero water, per the operator. MSB describes the campus as zero-water and direct-to-chip cooled at a PUE of 1.1. No water source, volume or permit figure is published, so the claim cannot be checked against anything. Sources (4) →
Meta Eagle Mountain Data Center Campus	Eagle Mountain	Water noted, no single method	Meta funds water restoration equal to 200% of the facility's consumption; in-house designs stated ~80% more water-efficient than industry average. Sources (3) →
Meta Los Lunas Data Center Campus	Los Lunas	Water noted, no single method	New AI-dedicated buildings designed to use substantially less water than earlier buildings Sources (2) →
Meta Social Circle / Stanton Springs Data Center	Social Circle	Water noted, no single method	Served within Southern Company / Walton EMC territory (Southern Company is the balancing authority; not an RTO/ISO). Sources (2) →
Microsoft Cheyenne Data Center Campus	Cheyenne	Water noted, no single method	Direct evaporative cooling uses water less than 10% of the year; Microsoft commits to replenish an estimated 566M gallons of water. Served by Black Hills Energy under Large Power Contract Service (LPCS) tariff. Sources (2) →
Microsoft Goodyear Data Center Campus (PHX70)	Goodyear	Water noted, no single method	Microsoft committed ~$36M toward a ~$90M expansion of Goodyear wastewater treatment; targets ~42M gallons/yr water savings (tracker-reported). Sources conflict on total campus acreage (147-acre documented land parcel vs ~300-acre marketed campus). Sources (2) →
Microsoft Quantum Lab Copenhagen (Magne)	Copenhagen, Denmark	Water noted, no single method	Quantum research facility relies on dilution-refrigerator cryogenics (millikelvin cooling of topological qubit test chips) rather than water-intensive process cooling; no disclosed water source. Sources (8) →
Nebius Mäntsälä Data Center	Mäntsälä	Water noted, no single method	Free cooling; heat-recovery system recovers ~20,000 MWh/yr, heating equivalent of ~2,500 Finnish homes Sources (2) →
OQC New York Quantum-AI Data Centre	New York, New York, USA	Water noted, no single method	Quantum processor cooled by on-system dilution refrigerator (helium-3/helium-4 cryogenics) to millikelvin temperatures rather than facility water; conventional data-hall cooling is provided by Digital Realty's JFK10 building systems. Sources (10) →
Origin Quantum Computing Center Hefei	Hefei, Anhui, China	Water noted, no single method	Superconducting quantum systems operate at millikelvin temperatures using dilution refrigerators (helium-3/helium-4 mixture); no meaningful process-water demand disclosed. Sources (10) →
Pasqal Paris-Saclay Quantum Facility	Palaiseau, Île-de-France, France	Water noted, no single method	Neutral-atom Rydberg architecture; no dilution refrigerator and no significant process-water cooling. QPUs operate at room temperature inside ultra-high-vacuum chambers, with heat load dominated by lasers and control electronics rejected via building HVAC. Sources (11) →
Poolside Project Horizon (West Texas)	Fort Stockton	Water noted, no single method	Established water and processing infrastructure on Longfellow Ranch, adjacent to a Permian Basin natural gas hub. Sources (5) →
Project Blue (Beale Infrastructure Pima County data center)	Tucson	Water noted, no single method	Tucson City Council rejected annexation/city-water (2025-08-06); project proceeded on ~290 acres of unincorporated Pima County land immediately north of the Pima County Fairgrounds. Sources (4) →
PsiQuantum Chicago Quantum Campus at IQMP	Chicago, Illinois, USA	Water noted, no single method	No conventional chilled-water cooling for the compute floor. PsiQuantum's photonic architecture uses liquid-helium cryoplants circulating coolant through a cryogenically cooled copper backplane at 2 to 4 K, replacing the chandelier-style dilution refrigerators used by superconducting qubit systems. Sources (12) →
PsiQuantum Moreton Bay Quantum Facility	Petrie, Queensland, Australia	Water noted, no single method	Cooling is dominated by a large custom Linde Engineering cryoplant operating around 4 Kelvin for the photonic chips (helium refrigeration cycle), not a conventional water-cooled DC loop. No municipal cooling-water figure has been disclosed. Sources (11) →
QCi Dirac-3 Quantum Machine at Digital Crossroad	Hammond, Indiana, USA	Water noted, no single method	Host DX-1 facility uses Lake Michigan water-side economization via heat exchanger plus air-side economizer and Munters refrigerant units. The Dirac-3 itself is a room-temperature photonic (thin-film lithium niobate) system and does not require dilution-refrigerator cryogenics. Sources (8) →
Qilimanjaro Quantum Data Center Barcelona	Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain	Water noted, no single method	Superconducting analog and digital quantum processors require dilution-refrigerator cryogenic cooling (millikelvin range via helium-3/helium-4 mixtures), not chilled-water heat rejection. No public disclosure of facility water use for classical compute co-located on site. Sources (9) →
QuEra Quantum Computing Lab Boston	Boston, Massachusetts, USA	Water noted, no single method	Neutral-atom architecture operates at room temperature using optical tweezers and laser cooling; no dilution refrigerator and no significant process water. Building HVAC only. Sources (8) →
Quantinuum Global Headquarters Broomfield	Broomfield, Colorado, USA	Water noted, no single method	Trapped-ion QCCD systems use ultra-high vacuum chambers with laser cooling of 137Ba+ ions rather than dilution-refrigerator or water-based cooling; no significant process water use disclosed. Sources (10) →
Quantinuum Helios at Oracle OCI AI Data Center	United States (Oracle OCI data center)	Water noted, no single method	Trapped-ion quantum systems do not use dilution-refrigerator cryogenics; Helios operates near room temperature with ultra-high-vacuum chambers and laser cooling of ions. No water cooling disclosed for the quantum system itself; HVAC is handled by the surrounding OCI data center. A single Helios unit draws roughly 60 kW excluding HVAC. Sources (8) →
Quantinuum Quantum R&D Center Albuquerque	Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA	Water noted, no single method	Not disclosed. Quantinuum's trapped-ion quantum processors use ultra-high-vacuum ion traps with laser cooling rather than dilution refrigerators, so cooling water is not a primary utility input for the R&D lab. Sources (6) →
Rigetti Computing Berkeley Quantum Lab	Berkeley, California, USA	Water noted, no single method	Rigetti's superconducting quantum processors run in dilution refrigerators using a helium-3/helium-4 mixture at millikelvin temperatures; the lab is not water-cooled at the process level. Sources (11) →
Scala AI City	Eldorado do Sul	Water noted, no single method	Zero water in cooling, per the operator. Scala says the campus uses refrigerant-based liquid cooling and targets a water usage effectiveness of zero, meaning no water in the cooling systems at all. That is a design target published at announcement, on a site of more than 1,730 acres opening at 54 MW. Sources (4) →
Stargate Milam County (Texas)	Rockdale	Water noted, no single method	Designed as a water-minimizing 'fast-build' campus. Sources (4) →
Tract Master-Planned Data Center Park (TRIC)	Storey County	Water noted, no single method	Tract controls over 1,100 acre-feet of water rights at TRIC Sources (2) →
Vermaland La Osa Data Center Park (Pinal County)	Eloy	Water noted, no single method	Site located along the Green Canal south of Eloy, Pinal County. Sources (2) →
Xanadu Toronto Photonic Quantum Facility	St. Michael's Hospital (Unity Health Toronto)	Water noted, no single method	Photonic quantum computing operates at room temperature (no dilution-refrigerator cryogenics or process water required); the packaging line is a controlled-environment cleanroom with standard HVAC. Sources (11) →

How we know this

The big-picture numbers here come from outside research, and we name each one: a federal report for how the water use works, a US national lab for the electricity figures, a UC Riverside study for the per-question estimate, and public records for the one clear per-site number. The notes on how each site gets its cooling water come straight from that site's record on DEPLOY.

Congressional Research Service2025-01-01 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (US DOE)2024-12-01 Ren et al., UC Riverside2023-04-28 Environmental and Energy Study Institute2025-06-25 Data Center Dynamics / The Oregonian (public records)2022-12-15

We track where each site gets its cooling water, which we can check, and we point to the research for the totals, which we cannot measure ourselves. We do not have an exact gallons number for a single site, and we do not claim one anywhere on this page.

Common questions

How much water does an AI data center use?

There is no single number. It can change by more than ten times from one site to the next, depending on how the building is cooled, the weather, and where its power comes from. Researchers have measured the big picture, and this page points to their work. We do not have an exact per-site number and will not publish one we cannot back up. What we do show is how each data center we track gets its cooling water.

Why do data centers need water at all?

To get rid of heat. Almost all the electricity a computer uses turns into heat, and that heat has to go somewhere. Letting water evaporate is a cheap way to carry it off, which is why many sites use cooling towers. It is not the only way. Air cooling, dry coolers, and sealed closed loops move the same heat with little or no water, and several sites we track are built that way.

Where does the water come from?

It depends on the site, and that is what we track. Some sites use regular city drinking water, which gets the most attention. Others use recycled water, seawater, or a sealed loop that only needs a top-off now and then. The table on this page sorts the sites we track by where their cooling water comes from.

Do data centers pollute the water they use?

Most cooling water either evaporates or gets returned, not turned into something toxic. The details depend on the system and any cleaning chemicals used, and what gets sent back out is controlled by water permits. We do not track the quality of the water a site sends back, so we do not claim anything about it. We track where the cooling water comes from.

Which data centers use the least water?

On our record, the sites that use the least are the ones cooled by air or dry systems, and the ones that run a sealed closed loop. Several of their operators say these use little or no water. The table on this page lists them by cooling method, each with a source. That is about the method they report, not a proven gallons ranking.

Does AI use more water than regular data centers?

AI packs a lot of computing, and a lot of heat, into a small space, which is why it has raised new worry about water. The estimates of AI's own water use come from outside research, and this page points to it. We track AI-scale sites and record how each one gets its cooling water. For the wider picture, see whether AI data centers are bad for the environment.

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How many AI data centers are actually running?Answer Data centers How many AI data centers are in the US?Answer Data centers What are the biggest AI data centers?Answer Data centers All verified answersHub Every standing question DEPLOY tracks.

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