Microsoft paid $76 million for a pumpkin farm covering an area of 1.647 million square meters.

CTOnews.com, December 23 (Xinhua)-- Microsoft spent $76 million (currently about 543 million yuan) on 407 acres (CTOnews.com) of pumpkin farm land from a local family in Wisconsin, according to local media Milwaukee Business Journal.

The land includes a pumpkin garden attraction called Land of the Giants and a nine-acre corn maze, adjacent to another 641 acres that Microsoft previously bought for $99.7 million (currently about 712 million yuan).

The land is owned by the Creuziger family in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, where the local government had planned to buy 1/3 of the land in 2017 to build a new factory in partnership with Foxconn, but the family rejected the offer.

Evaluator Dan McHugh said the price of the land was $174200 at the beginning of 2023 (currently about 1.244 million yuan), but has risen to $598400 (currently about 4.273 million yuan) after improvements.

The report says Microsoft plans to build a data center campus with an investment of more than $1 billion, with initial plans to hire 200 employees and a further 460.