Amazon drops nondisclosure agreements for US data center deals

Amazon will no longer ask local and state government partners to sign nondisclosure agreements on its US data center projects. The shift was confirmed in late September 2026, and it lands at a moment when Big Tech’s habit of building in the dark is drawing attention from Congress.

For years, town officials have negotiated some of the largest construction projects in their communities while legally barred from discussing them.

What Amazon is changing

The NDAs in question covered the kind of information residents tend to care about most. Critics have long argued that the agreements kept project scale, utility consumption and tax incentives out of public view.

Amazon’s new policy removes the requirement for government officials on the other side of the table. That means the size of a facility and the breaks offered to attract it could be discussed openly earlier in the process.

On September 30, 2026, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland launched a congressional inquiry into how Amazon, Google and Meta use NDAs with public officials.

Raskin’s inquiry centers on what these agreements mean for local governance. It also looks at how secrecy shapes the community debates that are supposed to happen before major projects are approved.

The data center land rush

In March 2026, Amazon paid more than $427 million for a 111-acre site in Ashburn, Virginia, to expand its data center footprint in Loudoun County.

Demand for data centers has been climbing, driven in large part by the needs of AI workloads. Large facilities require large amounts of electricity and supporting infrastructure. Those are precisely the details NDAs have historically kept from residents who share the same power grid.

In 2026, Amazon gave nearly $500,000 in grants to 40 community organizations in Northwest Louisiana. Its contributions have generally been tied to specific projects, typically running in the millions per location.

Why secrecy became a problem

Nondisclosure agreements are standard in corporate dealmaking. Companies use them to keep competitors from learning where they plan to build, and to avoid bidding wars over land.

The friction comes when one party is a public body. Elected officials answer to voters, and voters generally expect to know what their representatives are agreeing to, particularly when tax incentives are involved.

When the terms are confidential, residents are asked to trust a deal they cannot read. That has turned NDAs into a recurring flashpoint in towns weighing new facilities.

What this means

The competitive question now falls to Google and Meta. Both are named in Raskin’s inquiry, and both will be asked about the same practice Amazon just dropped.

Local governments are the other stakeholders to watch. Officials in places like Loudoun County will be able to share project details earlier, which could change how residents engage with proposals before votes happen.