Amazon will stop using non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) when negotiating data center deals with local governments, TechCrunch reports. The company follows a similar move by Microsoft, which it announced earlier this year.
At a glance
- According to TechCrunch, Amazon will no longer use NDAs in data center deals with local governments.
- Microsoft has taken a similar step.
- Secrecy has fueled community backlash against AI infrastructure.
- Opposition has led to hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums, from New York to San Francisco.
Why secrecy became a problem
According to TechCrunch, secrecy has intensified resistance to AI infrastructure and contributed to the many moratoriums. When companies and municipalities negotiate behind closed doors, residents can quickly feel excluded. This is where the criticism takes hold.
The move by Amazon and Microsoft is therefore also an attempt to regain lost trust. Whether it will be enough is an open question, which the source itself raises without answering.
Trust as the real product
The debate extends beyond data centers. The source also describes a wave of startups betting that consumers will give AI agents access to their inboxes, files and credit cards. There, too, trust may be the decisive bottleneck. Whether transparency in infrastructure deals actually increases acceptance cannot yet be determined from the reporting alone.
Assessment: what this means for German companies
The news concerns US municipalities first, but it is a signal for German firms as well. Companies planning data centers or using hyperscaler infrastructure should expect site decisions to be increasingly publicly traceable. Transparency in permitting could gain importance in Germany too. It remains unclear whether such a trend will take hold in Germany and the EU, and how it would affect planning certainty and permitting timelines.
Sources
Editorially owned by Ideal Syka. Sources and method: Newsroom & method. Tips and corrections: ai@i6eal.de.
