Amazon drops NDAs from local data center talks, following Microsoft

Amazon quietly changes its playbook

Amazon has said it will stop using nondisclosure agreements when negotiating with local governments over data center projects, according to TechCrunch. The commitment did not arrive as a standalone announcement: it appeared partway through a longer Amazon blog post arguing that data centers are good for the communities that host them.

The practical effect is that terms discussed between the company and municipal officials — incentives, land agreements, utility arrangements — can in principle become public while talks are still underway, rather than surfacing only after a deal is signed.

Microsoft moved first

Amazon is following rather than leading here. As TechCrunch's Anthony Ha noted on the outlet's Equity podcast, Microsoft announced earlier this year that it would similarly stop using NDAs in its dealings with local governments on data centers. With the two largest cloud providers now aligned, secrecy in these negotiations is losing its default status across the sector.

Why secrecy became the target

Speaking on the same episode, Sean O'Kane argued that closed-door negotiation sits at the root of much of the backlash against data centers. Residents worried about property values, electricity prices or water use often cannot even establish who will occupy a planned facility, he said, because many projects are negotiated with the public aware only that a data center is coming — not who will actually use it.

O'Kane compared the dynamic to Uber's rapid expansion in the mid-2010s, when the company routinely struck deals with cities in private. Recalling a story from his time at The Verge about a city outside Orlando, where Uber quietly negotiated tax subsidies to underwrite rides connecting riders to public transit, he said the secrecy made the company comfortable asking for progressively more.

The moratorium wave

The announcements arrive amid a spread of local restrictions. Rebecca Bellan pointed out on the podcast that a significant number of data center moratoriums have been passed, including one recently in San Francisco — a location she found ironic. She was skeptical about their durability, however: most run only a year or two, while facilities typically take two to five years to come online, and buildouts are already being slowed by zoning and funding constraints.

Ha highlighted New York's moratorium, which pauses permits for large projects for about a year — technically until the state finalizes an environmental review process expected to take that long. Such measures are often framed as requests for further study rather than outright opposition, he noted, which leaves officials room to approve projects later on.

Even so, Ha argued that industry backers appear worried, citing combative public posts from figures including Trump and David Sacks.

A first step, not a fix

None of the participants suggested that dropping NDAs would convert opponents into supporters. Ha's view was more modest: transparency removes a legitimate opening objection — that residents cannot evaluate projects whose terms were negotiated in secret — and is therefore a worthwhile first step.

O'Kane framed the deeper problem as one of communication. In an era when tech companies favor going direct to audiences rather than engaging with journalists, he argued, the industry explains itself poorly and appears visibly frustrated that most people cannot picture how AI infrastructure will be useful to them.

Why it matters

Data centers are the physical substrate of the AI boom, and local consent is becoming a real constraint on how fast that infrastructure can be built. If Amazon and Microsoft have both abandoned NDAs, quiet negotiations become harder to justify for every other developer, colocation operator and economic development office in the market. Whether openness actually softens opposition remains an open question — the moratorium record suggests communities mainly want more time and better evidence on power, water and fiscal impacts. What has clearly changed is the burden of argument: the largest cloud providers can no longer treat expansion as inevitable and instead have to make the case for each project in public.