Amazon drops data center NDAs, testing whether transparency rebuilds 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. The change is a sign of how major technology companies are adjusting the way they deal with local communities as they race to expand AI infrastructure.

According to TechCrunch, secrecy around data center negotiations has been a major driver of community opposition to AI infrastructure. When the terms of a deal are kept confidential, residents and local officials have little basis for judging what a project will actually mean for their area.

The scale of that opposition is significant: hundreds of moratoriums on data centers have been proposed or enacted across the country, from New York to San Francisco, according to the report. Those local roadblocks now stand as a real constraint on the expansion of AI compute.

Amazon's decision, following Microsoft's earlier move, is widely read as a response to that pressure. But the report raises a pointed question: is dropping NDAs enough to rebuild trust?

The same TechCrunch segment also highlighted a parallel trend: a wave of startups betting that consumers will hand AI agents access to their credit cards, letting the agents make payments on their behalf.

The two threads look unrelated, but they point in the same direction. AI is moving quickly into sensitive areas such as physical infrastructure and everyday transactions, while transparency and governance around it lag behind.

What to watch next is whether other data center operators follow Amazon and Microsoft in abandoning NDAs, and whether the pace of local moratoriums slows as a result.