SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Microsoft ( MSFT ) on Thursday

said it plans to build a second massive artificial intelligence

data center in Wisconsin, bringing its spending in the state to

more than $7 billion.

The new project will join a $3.3 billion data center in

Mount Pleasant in the southeastern corner of the state,

announced last year. Microsoft ( MSFT ) said Thursday that the initial

data center remains on track to open next year and will employ

about 500 people at its peak, expanding to about 800 once the

second data center is complete.

The area in Racine County, which sits nestled between

Milwaukee and Chicago, has drawn the attention of U.S.

presidents of both political parties in recent years. It was

initially the site of a proposed $10 billion factory by

electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn, which builds phones for

Apple and others, during the first term of President Donald

Trump, but those plans were drastically scaled back.

At a Microsoft ( MSFT ) event last year, President Joe Biden, then

running against Trump for a second time, highlighted Foxconn's

pullback and Microsoft's ( MSFT ) decision to move forward with a data

center.

On Thursday, Microsoft ( MSFT ) said that the site would eventually

house the world's most powerful AI supercomputer, connecting

together hundreds of thousands of powerful chips from Nvidia ( NVDA )

. The company said that it plans to pre-pay for

electrical infrastructure to avoid raising electricity rates in

the region and that a state-of-the-art cooling system will tap

into Wisconsin's cool climate and reduce the data center's

yearly water use to that of an average restaurant.

"This is where the next generation of AI will be trained,

setting the stage for breakthroughs that will shape the future.

New discoveries in medicine, science, and other critical fields

will start right here, with the models we train in Wisconsin,"

Microsoft ( MSFT ) President Brad Smith said in a blog post.