microsoftIn 2008, Microsoft opened a $550 million, 470,000 square foot data center in the Westover Hills area of San Antonio.
At the time, a Microsoft executive said that was just the beginning of Microsoft’s investment in San Antonio.
She was right.
This week, Microsoft announced a $1 million donation to the University of Texas at San Antonio and its Texas Sustainable Energy Research Institute. The company is also entering into a three year partnership with UTSA focused on creating generators that consume less energy to power massive data centers.
“As Microsoft embraces a more thoughtful approach to powering the cloud, we’re looking at how we can reinvent the datacenter to be more efficient and use more sustainable energy sources,” Brian Janous, director of energy strategy at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. “Very few cities have embraced the clean energy economy like San Antonio and its mayor, Julian Castro.”
Microsoft is also investing $250,000 to expand its existing data center in San Antonio by more than 250,000 square feet.
For more on the partnership, read UTSA’s post.

The video below, by UTSA, is from the event held at UTSA on Wednesday.