Amazon Claims Data Centers Are 7-Times More Water-Efficient than Rivals as Seattle Pauses New Builds

When it comes to total water use, AI data centers are a drop in the bucket

If you hang out in any even vaguely AI-skeptical parts of the Internet, you've probably stumbled on plenty of memes and posts premised on data centers' insatiable thirst for water to power evaporative cooling. But a new report from Amazon highlights just how little water all these AI data centers are using in aggregate, on a relative basis, even as individual data centers can strain local water supplies. In a Thursday blog post, Amazon claims it…

Amazon says its data centers are 7x more water-efficient than industry average

Shortly after a United Nations University report revealed the environmental footprint of data centers already rivals that of some of the world’s largest countries, Amazon revealed its data centers are seven times more water-efficient than the industry average.

Amazon owns up to using 2.5bn gallons of H2O in its bit barns last year

Amazon says its datacenters used about 2.5 billion gallons of water last year, but claims that's far less than rival hyperscalers and that it remains on track to become "water positive" by 2030. In a blog post, the digital tat bazaar and cloud computing biz says the 2.5 billion gallon figure covers its entire global datacenter footprint for 2025. It downplayed the number by comparing it to the volume of water Americans - a country of 350 million…

Amazon reveals exactly how much water its data centers used last year — and claims its 2.5 billion gallons puts it below the industry average

Amazon says it used far less water than Google at its data centers as it turns to air cooling and recycled water consumption.

Amazon: Our Data Centers Used 2.5 Billion Gallons of Water Last Year

Amazon frames its data center water usage as more efficient than its peers, though previous reports indicated it was much higher.

Amazon’s data centers used 2.5 billion gallons of water last year

Just after Seattle enacted a one-year data center moratorium that some of Amazon's own employees pushed for, Amazon shared how much water its data centers use, reportedly for the first time. With concerns about water consumption and energy use a focus of new AI data center construction debates, Amazon says its global data center operations consumed 2.5 billion gallons of water in 2025 at a rate of 0.12 liters per kilowatt-hour of electricity, dr…