Aterio, a Data-as-a-Service company that tracks infrastructure development using satellite imagery, says it has detected renewed construction activity at three Microsoft data center campuses in Catawba County, North Carolina. Analysis points to simultaneous activity across all sites after roughly seven months of limited activity, suggesting a coordinated restart rather than isolated work.
The data comes from satellite imagery analyzed in January and February 2026. According to Aterio, the Lyle Creek, Boyd Farm, and Stover North campuses all showed new construction signals after activity had slowed through much of 2025, following earlier indications that Microsoft was scaling back or pausing some data center projects.
Microsoft restarting
“The pattern is hard to ignore, three dormant campuses, all moving at once. That’s the kind of early signal we look for in every project,” said Sergio Toro, CEO of Aterio.
Aterio tracks infrastructure development as part of its Data-as-a-Service platform, using satellite imagery to monitor large construction projects. It said the three North Carolina campuses had shown little to no progress since around the second quarter of 2025, making the return of activity across all locations stand out.
Public notices filed with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers indicate each campus is planned to include five 48MW data center buildings. Supporting infrastructure includes Duke Energy substations, with two serving Lyle Creek and one each for Boyd Farm and Stover North.
Based on comparable Microsoft hyperscale sites using what Aterio describes as a roughly 250,000 sq ft building configuration, the company estimates each building could be supported by about 20 backup generators. That setup implies around 54MW of total nameplate capacity per building when redundancy, cooling, and electrical overhead are included.
Using those figures, the three-campus development could range from roughly 720MW of critical IT capacity to about 810MW based on generator-backed nameplate estimates. The calculations are based on 15 buildings across the three sites.
At Lyle Creek, satellite imagery showed renewed movement on concrete slabs that had been inactive for months. At Boyd Farm, Aterio reported progress around substation areas along with land grading on the southern section of the property. Stover North showed notable advancement at the substation level, while activity on building pads appeared more limited.
Aterio expects the construction program to move forward in phases. Even with a faster build schedule, the company estimates first activations could arrive no earlier than the third quarter of 2027. A more realistic range places initial capacity online between late Q4 2027 and Q1 2028, followed by staged completion of the remaining buildings.
Local economic development filings describe Microsoft’s plans as a multi-year effort with a minimum $1 billion investment over a 10-year period, structured so development could continue through 2032.
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“This is exactly the type of signal our platform is built to surface,” said Javier, Head of Data Center Research at Aterio. “Microsoft’s simultaneous restart across all three Catawba County campuses, after a sustained pause, is a meaningful datapoint for anyone modeling hyperscaler demand, grid load growth in the Carolinas, or construction sector activity tied to AI infrastructure. We’re seeing it in the satellite record before it shows up anywhere else.”
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