“We no longer use nondisclosure agreements with the government agencies we work with on our projects,” AWS chief executive Matt Garman wrote on Amazon’s website. The same post pledged more than $1 billion over five years to data centre communities and promised yearly figures on energy and water use.
New to this? Read it in simple words
- Amazon says it no longer makes officials sign secrecy deals about its data centres.
- Such deals kept towns from telling people about new data centre plans.
- Amazon also pledged more than $1 billion over five years to these towns.
- Amazon did not say if older secrecy deals still count.
- NDA
- A nondisclosure agreement: a contract that keeps information secret.
- Moratorium
- A temporary stop, here on approving new data centres.
- AWS
- Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud business, which runs its data centres.
What Amazon said
“We no longer use nondisclosure agreements with the government agencies we work with on our projects,” Garman wrote in the post, which sets out a framework Amazon calls “Built Together”.
TechCrunch notes that this is a single sentence in a longer post. Neither TechCrunch nor WNDU found any word on existing agreements, a start date or exceptions.
The post also says Amazon will publish its energy use, water use and share of carbon-free energy every year, and host open houses where it operates.
From Matt Garman’s post on Amazon’s site, compared with TechCrunch and WNDU. All commitments are Amazon’s own.
The money
Amazon says it gave more than $1 billion to US data centre communities over the past three years. It says it will add more than $1 billion over the next five years.
Both figures are Amazon’s own. The Register notes that Amazon said “more than $1 billion” and gave no exact sum; TechCrunch says no breakdown was given.
We reported the pledge on October 2. The NDA line in the same post drew wider notice a day later.
The backlash behind it
“Right now there are over 100 data center moratoriums being considered across the country,” Garman wrote. That count is Amazon’s.
In South Bend, Indiana, the mayor signed orders in September barring city officials from data centre NDAs, after a city official said he had signed one with AWS in 2023, WNDU reports.
The Register lists the complaints communities raise, from water use to gas turbines, and treats Amazon’s claims with scepticism.
Sources
Every fact in this story comes from the sources below. Open them to check our work.
- 1Primary source · October 2, 2026Amazon’s approach to data centers: community-focused, sustainable and efficient Amazon
- 2Research · October 3, 2026Amazon responds to data center backlash, says it no longer uses NDAs TechCrunch
- 3
- 4Research · October 2, 2026Shut up and take our money: Amazon plows $1B+ into quashing datacenter dissent The Register
We read Amazon’s post and compared TechCrunch, WNDU and The Register. Wired, DatacenterDynamics and GeekWire also covered it but blocked our reader; Wired’s headline says Amazon is “going to stop”, while Amazon’s own words say it already has, so we use Amazon’s wording. The South Bend details come from WNDU alone.