Amazon Web Services (AWS) has purchased 234 acres of land south of Columbus in Pickaway County as part of its planned data center expansion in central Ohio.

The land was purchased for $49.1 million, and lies on state Route 104 outside of Southern Point, reports The Columbus Dispatch.

The deal closed on December 28, but was only commented on by AWS on April 2, which said: "We are constantly evaluating new locations based on customer demand. We recently purchased land in Pickaway County and are performing due diligence in exploring possible data center locations."

The company announced plans to invest $7.8bn into Ohio data centers in June 2023 by the end of 2029/2030. The company first launched its cloud in the Midwest in 2016, and currently operates campuses in nearby Franklin and Licking counties.

According to AWS, at the time of announcing the newly planned investment, it has spent $6.3bn in Ohio since 2015.

This was shortly followed by a commitment to spend $3.5bn in New Albany to the east of Columbus on new data centers as part of the wider investment. This would see five data center buildings developed with a total of 1.25 million square feet of data center space. Construction is currently set to begin in 2025.

Amazon launched a solar farm that spans 2,000 acres and is sited in Pickaway and Ross counties in September 2023.

Central Ohio is currently home to more than 50 data centers. Earlier this month, CyrusOne announced plans for a $150m data center in New Albany.

Other providers looking to develop or already having data centers in the area include hyperscalers such as Google, Microsoft, and Meta. Colocation providers including QTS, Edged Energy, and Aligned Data Centers are also working on data center projects nearby.

A DC Byte report recently identified New Albany as the "data center capital of the midwest."