Tech Insider: Size of four rugby fields – Amazon buys more land in Auckland, Tesla’s sales knock, Kiwi joins Moonshot team

The AWS hyperscale data centre under construction at Westgate. Amazon says its Auckland "zone" will open this year. Photo / Chris Keall

Amazon expands its data centre presence in West Auckland to the degree it can only be measured in rugby fields. Tesla’s sales fall off a cliff in Europe, NZ and elsewhere outside the US, and a Kiwi gets a plum job with Amazon in the US leading the tech giant’s “Moonshot” team.

Shoppers know the northwestern side of Westgate for its Costco and Mitre 10 Mega. But the NZ Retail Property Group (NZ RPG) development has also recentlybecome the home of giant “hyperscale” data centres operated by Microsoft and DCI, both of which opened recently.

Now they’re being joined by a third: an Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centre under construction behind Naylor Love fencing – and it’s just had official approval to get even bigger.

An NZ Retail Property Group map of existing and new projects at the firm's Westgate Town Centre development in northwest Auckland. Image / NZRPG website

Despite various public records revealing the location and NZ RPG including it in a promotional map (see a high-resolution version of its master plan here), an Amazon NZ spokeswoman refused to comment on the location of the data centre – in keeping with the Jeff Bezos-founded firm’s global security policy.

But property records show Amazon has now acquired three parcels of adjoining land totalling 41,774 square metres, or 4.18 hectares – that’s the size of four rugby fields.

In the latest deal, dated December 16 last year and released last week, the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) gave Amazon permission to buy the 0.2ha 77 Fred Taylor Drive in northwest Auckland (that is, on the edge of Westgate) for a confidential sum. A change of land title went through on January 14.

$250m-$350m consideration

That followed a March 2022 decision in which the OIO gave Amazon the green light to acquire land at an undisclosed location for the “establishment of a business, being a cluster of data centres in Auckland ... Consideration [price]: Between $250,000,000 and $350,000,000″.

The AWS hyperscale data centre facility under construction at Westgate on February 6. Amazon says it will be finished by the end of this year – implying a much more accelerated construction timetable than nearby rivals. Photo / Chris Keall

The location of the land was not listed, but property records show a few months later, Amazon bought 73 Fred Taylor Drive (a 26,411sq m property) and 75 Fred Taylor Drive (13,345sq m) – now followed by the top-up purchase of the smaller number 77.

Amazon originally said it would open its Auckland data centre facilities by the end of 2024, but drainage issues delayed resource consent. Photo / Chris Keall

(In a fourth property deal, approved by the OIO in September last year, Amazon bought a 500sq m block of land – likely in Warkworth – for a ground station for Project Kuiper, its coming satellite communications network that will compete with Elon Musk’s Starlink.)

Amazon first announced its plans for an Auckland data centre zone in 2021 (like Microsoft, the firm held meetings with then-Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern about investment in NZ), saying it would spend $7.5 billion on the project over 10 years (for land, construction, staff, services and hardware) and create 1000 jobs, including those for the construction phase (data centres are highly automated once up-and-running). Separately, Amazon cited a study saying its data centre zone would add $10.8b to New Zealand’s GDP over a decade and a half.

Robust timeline

The tech giant first said the facility would open by the end of 2024, but construction faced extended delays because of drainage issues raised by Auckland Council (the council told the Herald the drainage hold-up was specific to the parcels of land and not related to the site’s function as a data centre).

Now the build is finally under way – if still in the very early stages, going by the photos and video captured by the Herald last week which accompany this article – Amazon says it will be completed by the end of this year, implying a much more accelerated construction schedule than neighbouring data centre projects.

The firm says the local “Region” (as it calls a cluster of at least three independently-powered data centres) will boost performance of its AWS cloud and AI services, with early customers including One NZ, Vector and Datacom (which also maintains its own data centres).

Microsoft's data centre in Westgate, Auckland in August 2024. It opened in December. It sits a block over from Amazon's facility, which is still in the early stages of construction. Photo / Chris Keall

Amazon’s Westgate site is similar in size to the Microsoft facility now open a block over – where costs were put at $1.06b (read a breakdown here).

But it’s still smaller than the combined footprint of CDC’s twin data centres in Silverdale and nearby Hobsonville – where half-owner Infratil put the initial build cost at $300 million before recent expansions that have included a doubling of the Hobsonville site – or DCI’s second facility, in Albany, which is easily the largest announced so far; its 5.8ha site will house more than 80,000 servers.

DCI's data centre at Westgate sits behind Microsoft's facility. Photo / Chris Keall

Unlike Amazon and Microsoft, DCI has been happy to reveal the location of its smaller, now-operational Westgate site (its address and photos feature on its website) and its still under-construction Albany site, which it said would cost $400m (including $68m for the land; DCI said it would spend a total of around $600m including Westgate, providing more than 50 megawatts of capacity).

Microsoft and Amazon have both promised multiple data centre sites in Auckland, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will build more facilities. DCI, owned by Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management, makes and runs data centres used by Microsoft, Amazon, Google and other Big Tech players, while in Australia, Microsoft co-locates in CDC data centres (Microsoft NZ refuses to comment on whether that will be the case in Auckland).

CDC's Hobsonville data centre has doubled in size since it first opened in late 2022. The half-Infratil-owned firm offers some 90 megawatts of capacity between the Hobsonville facility and its twin at Silverdale. CDC spent more than $300m on its initial build. Infratil values privately held CDC, which includes multiple data centres across the Tasman, at more than $10b.

Another view of CDC's Hobsonville data centre, with the new section closest to camera. Photo / Chris Keall

Water and power hogs?

Historically, data centres have been water hogs, using tens or even hundreds of millions of litres of water per year for cooling. But the most recent designs use air-cooling and a closed system that recirculates one lot of water.

“Hyperscale” or super-giant data centres are described by how many megawatts of power they consume at peak usage.

“Based on the data centres already connected, and confirmed plans agreed with us in coming years, we could see the total capacity required for data centres reach around 500MW over the next five years,” energy distributor Vector said in comments supplied to the Herald late last year. That’s the equivalent power demand of 200,000 homes and represents a huge addition to the city’s existing load, which can peak at up to 1700MW (the load is displayed live by Transpower here).

In the US, there are plans to bring shuttered nuclear power plants back online, and build new ones, to deal with the AI-fueled boom in data centres. Here, authorities say the new data centres will slowly build up to peak capacity and that enough new power will be generated from under-construction or planned new plants to accommodate them.

Microsoft and Amazon both say they’re committed to renewable power and helping to fund new generation.

In Amazon’s case, it signed a deal with Mercury Energy for supply of 50% of the electricity from its soon-to-be-completed 222MW Turitea South wind farm, which will be used to power its data centre cluster at Westgate.

Like Amazon, Microsoft wouldn’t comment on its Auckland facility’s number of servers, or peak power use, but the tech giant said it had signed “a 10-year contract with Microsoft supported by Contact Energy’s investment decision to construct the Te Huka 3 geothermal power station, which can generate 51.4MW of reliable and renewable generation throughout the year”. Microsoft said its Auckland data centre would use less than Te Huka 3’s 51.4MW annual output.

Lovina McMurchy, the Kiwi ex-pat back at Amazon's corporate HQ in Seattle, this time hunting for the next big thing for the tech giant to invest in.

Back in the Amazon

Speaking of Amazon, Lovina McMurchy (Ngāti Rongomai) has rejoined the firm.

McMurchy – who has never been shy on issues like investor migrants and tax – gained senior roles at Starbucks (thank her for Wi-Fi in its cafes), Microsoft and Amazon ahead of moving back to New Zealand to become a general partner at venture capital firm Movac, before joining Wellington-based startup Kry10, a shift that included a move back to Seattle as she rustled up funds for the early-stage firm. She’s also served on Pushpay’s board before its delisting.

In her new role as a “founder in residence” for Amazon, McMurchy says she’ll be “leading projects for the Moonshot team, chartered with identifying, building and launching the next $10b business for Amazon”.

She’ll be on an “internal incubator team leveraging frontier technology into new lines of business”.

After raising $6m for Kry10 – from a mix of investors spanning the CIA’s venture capital wing to an iwi fund – to get the start-up on solid footing, it was time for McMurchy’s next big thing, which involves hunting for the next big thing worthy of Jeff Bezos’ cheque book. She told the Herald the new Amazon role came with strict conflict-of-interest rules, requiring her to resign all of her start-up roles and directorships.

Elon takes a knock

Overall, US President Donald Trump’s new confidant, Elon Musk, has hugely increased his wealth over the past year (Forbes’ real-time ranking puts it at US$436b as I type).

But some of the gloss has come off recently as Musk’s wealth is strongly tied to the value of Tesla.

The electric car maker’s shares were languishing at US$144.68 in April last year as demand for EVs slowed.

But the stock began a bull run in October as Musk backed Trump’s campaign, and the Republican presidential nominee’s campaign began to turn around.

The stock peaked at an all-time high of US$479.86 on December 17 after Trump’s election win.

But since then it’s slumped to US$361.32.

Promise better than the reality (so far). With Trump cutting EV and charger subsidies, and sales declining, Tesla shares have fallen since the new president took office.

Trump has always said he would remove a US$7500 federal subsidy for EV buyers and target subsidies for EV charger networks – and has duly fired off an executive order for those measures.

Musk’s line has always been that they would hit Tesla hard but traditional car makers harder as they tried to go electric, improving his firm’s position overall. He’s also looking for a more friendly regulatory environment for Tesla’s long-delayed low-cost robotaxi, which is scheduled for trials before year’s end.

But so far, investors seem a little wary. Tesla recently reported its first annual sales decline in a decade, and this week a Financial Times report claimed the EV makers’ sales had collapsed in Europe, where Musk’s politics are less popular – at least with the demographic who tend to buy low-emission vehicles.

The FT quoted an automotive analyst who said for January 2025, Tesla’s unit sales were down 63.4% in France, 59.5% in Germany and 44.3% in Norway.

Another wrinkle: Tariff-target China has a near-monopoly on several of the rare-earth elements used in EVs. On the flipside, Trump’s 25% first-term tariff on BYD, which was raised to 100% by the Biden administration and is now set to rise further, helps shield Tesla from its lower-cost Chinese rival in the US.

In New Zealand – where, beyond Musk’s politics, key elements have been the end of the Clean Car Discount and the introduction of road-user charges – Tesla has seen a heavier sales decline, in line with the low-emission segment as a whole.

Motor Industry Association figures showed Tesla in eighth place for new vehicle registrations for 2023 as it clocked 4907 sales for 3% market share.

For 2024, Musk’s firm did not make the MIA’s top 15 brands, implying sales lower than 15th-placed Isuzu (1514 for 1% market share).

And Tesla did not make the top five in selling EVs for the first month of 2025.

The MIA says the top-selling electric cars in the still-depressed market (total sales were just 563) were the BYD Atto 3, GWM Ora, Nissan Leaf, KGM Torres and Polestar’s Polestar 2.

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.