Microsoft has begun construction on a new data center project in north San Jose, nearly a decade after first acquiring the site. The company has broken ground on a 48-megawatt facility designed to support rising demand for cloud services and artificial intelligence workloads. The planned development will comprise two buildings totaling 397,205 square feet, with completion targeted for 2028. HITT has been named general contractor for the project, according to reporting from the Silicon Valley Business Journal.
The data center is sited at 1657 Alviso-Milpitas Rd. in San Jose’s Alviso neighborhood. Microsoft purchased the 65-acre parcel in 2017 for $73 million, establishing a long-dated pipeline position before moving into active development. The San Jose Planning Commission granted project approval in April 2025, clearing a key entitlement milestone prior to this week’s groundbreaking activity.
At a June 10 ceremony marking the start of construction, Jonathan Noble, Microsoft’s senior director of infrastructure government affairs, described the facility as part of the region’s essential digital backbone. He characterized the project as critical infrastructure that underpins both everyday personal technology use and broader economic activity. Noble emphasized that the significance of the development extends beyond on-site employment and the physical buildings, framing the data center as foundational compute infrastructure.
The multi-year build-out is intended to bring new large-scale computing capacity online in San Jose by 2028, with the project configuration focused on delivering dedicated data center space. The two-building layout and stated power rating reflect a specialized design for cloud and AI-related operations, rather than general-purpose commercial use. While the article notes Microsoft’s role at the groundbreaking and HITT’s role as general contractor, it does not specify any additional development partners, financing arrangements, or prospective end users for the facility.
Project details released to date focus on site history, entitlements, and core specifications, including the acreage, square footage, and planned computing capacity. The development follows a sequential path from land acquisition in 2017 to local planning approval in 2025 and now to construction commencement in 2026, positioning the Alviso site for delivery as a new data center asset later this decade.
