Amazon and others are done keeping data center deals secret. Is it enough to build trust?

Amazon says it will stop using nondisclosure agreements when negotiating data center deals with local governments, following a similar move by Microsoft earlier this year. TechCrunch's Equity crew used this week's episode to ask whether that changes how these deals actually get done.

The backdrop is serious. Secrecy has fueled community backlash against AI infrastructure, and opposition has led to hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums, from New York to San Francisco. TechCrunch reported that AWS CEO Matt Garman counted more than 100 data center moratoriums under consideration across the United States.

We think ending NDAs is the right call and a long-overdue one. Local officials signing confidentiality agreements before their neighbors even know a project exists is a recipe for exactly the backlash the industry now faces. Public infrastructure that draws on public power and water should be negotiated in public.

But it is a low bar. The trust problem is not only about who knew what, and when. It is about whether people believe what they are told once they do know. In TechCrunch's reporting, Garman paired the NDA news with a defense of data centers on water, electricity prices, pollution and community benefit. Some of those claims are contested, including by an independent watchdog that blamed data centers for a 76 percent year-over-year price increase on the largest U.S. grid. Transparency that arrives alongside a sales pitch tends to be received as a sales pitch.

The episode's chapter on the industry's communication problem gets at the heart of it. AI companies need these buildings, and the communities hosting them want evidence, not assurances: independent measurement of water and power use, binding commitments on rates, and a real say before permits are secured.

Our view: we want AI capacity built, because useful AI runs on it. The fastest way to get it built is to stop treating towns as obstacles. If NDAs go away but the rest of the playbook stays the same, expect moratoriums to keep spreading.

This episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosted by Anthony Ha, Sean O'Kane and Rebecca Bellan, also covered personal AI agents, Ghost's $3,500 computer for personal AI, Lambda's $4 billion raise and Uber's $2.3 billion move into catering.