Sunlight Research Center’s Michael Nolan and Seraphina Feron provided research and data analysis.
Thousands of acres southeast of Cheyenne owned by and associated with U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis lie in the path of Microsoft’s planned data center expansion, Laramie County property records show.
One of Microsoft’s existing data centers — a climate-controlled warehouse of computers, data storage and networks — sits southeast of Cheyenne on land the company purchased from the Lummis family in 2021. In April, the Seattle-area tech giant announced plans to buy 200 acres adjacent to its data center in the Bison Business Park and said it will purchase another 3,000 acres nearby.
Lummis, members of her family and companies associated with them own about 6,000 contiguous acres that almost surround the Microsoft center. Microsoft displayed a map Thursday at a Cheyenne community information session showing its 3,200-acre expansion extending into that Lummis family property.
Microsoft’s pending purchases land at the doorstep of one of tech’s biggest supporters in Congress. Lummis, known as the crypto queen of the Senate, has sponsored at least five significant cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, blockchain, stablecoin and tech bills. Political action committees associated with her received $1.34 million, including from major cryptocurrency and tech interests, since Dec. 31, 2021 and July 2025, WyoFile and reporting partner the Sunlight Research Center have found.
Microsoft and members of Lummis family — the senator, her brother Doran and daughter Annaliese Wiederspahn — would not comment or agree to interviews about the development or their relationship to the project. The senator’s family has owned much of the expansion property for decades — some dating back to 1944 and before — and has a long history of ranching, real estate transactions and business operations in and around Cheyenne.
Wiederspahn is a board member of Cheyenne LEADS, a corporation dedicated to area economic development, including data centers.
Microsoft’s land-buy announcement comes as Cheyenne is quickly becoming a data-center hub — the city is weighing proposals for 40 to 70 new data centers, according to some estimates — amid questions among area residents about water and energy usage, plus sweeping changes to the landscape. Those concerns prompted the Cheyenne City Council to consider a moratorium on new data centers, but local officials ultimately voted against such a measure.
Lummis has heard those queries, she wrote in a September op-ed.
“During my travels across Wyoming, countless folks have approached me about AI and the data centers coming to our state,” she wrote. “I tell them the truth: If we don’t power America’s AI with Wyoming energy, China will build their AI dominance on their coal instead.”
Abundant energy and land
Data centers are large, climate-controlled warehouses that contain computers, data storage and networks — used by Microsoft to establish and maintain the Microsoft Cloud, where data is kept. “[Y]ou can store your photos, play Xbox games, video call with your family, and work on documents from anywhere and on any device, without needing a powerful computer,” the company explains.
While some data centers focus on storage, others focus on providing the computing power to operate artificial intelligence. Those servers can also be used for bitcoin mining.
Wyoming’s coal and potential nuclear power generation are a plus for energy-hungry data centers and AI, Lummis has stated. Wyoming’s cool climate and lack of corporate business tax also fuel data center development near Cheyenne. The state’s open land is another plus for data center development — and Lummis and her family own a lot of it.
“Folks have approached me about AI and the data centers coming to our state. I tell them the truth.”
Cynthia Lummis
Microsoft established its existing data center southeast of Cheyenne on 249 acres of Lummis-family land in the Bison Business Park in 2021, a subdivision created through a fast-track planning process. Arp and Hammond Hardware Co., whose president is Lummis’ brother Doran Lummis, carved out an adjacent 200-acre parcel in April 2025, a year before the tech company announced its intent to expand there.
Beyond that, Lummis’ family owns almost all the surrounding land — about 6,000 acres of it — including property mapped for purchase by Microsoft and displayed at Thursday’s open house in Cheyenne. The sprawling holdings, most of which are unirrigated rangeland, are owned by Lummis family companies Arp and Hammond, Lummis Livestock Co., Old Horse Pasture Inc. and Sweetgrass Land Co., Laramie County property records show.
The expansion, Microsoft said in an April statement, will be “strengthening Southeast Wyoming’s role as a growing hub for technology-driven economic activity, innovation and job creation.”
Crypto Queen
Lummis, elected to the Wyoming House of Representatives in 1979 at 24, was the youngest woman to serve in the Legislature. Voters then elected her to the state Senate, Wyoming treasurer and, in 2008, as Wyoming’s lone U.S. representative. She won election to the Senate in 2020, defeating Democrat Merav Ben-David with 73% of the vote.
Lummis announced in December she won’t seek reelection this year.
While in the Senate, Lummis has advocated for and sponsored legislation boosting cryptocurrencies — virtual money like bitcoin and stablecoins — and supported technology innovators, artificial intelligence and blockchain.
In 2021, “I founded the Financial Innovation Caucus to educate my fellow senators about the vast potential of emerging technologies to promote financial inclusion and build new wealth for all,” she said in a statement that year.
In December 2022, she placed her shares of Microsoft (valued between $15,000-$50,000) and bitcoin (valued between $50,000-$100,000) in a blind trust “to avoid any conflict of interest or appearance of any such conflict.”
Details about the land sale, including the price, have not been publicly disclosed.
When I graduated high school in 1966 I had little chance of going to college because my parents’ only income was the monthly Social Security check so I was going to join the military because that what my friends did. Nevertheless, I was given a scholarship and grant to attend a private college at the time when there were NO “affirmative action” programs although I had the highest SAT scores at my Denver high school and had one of the highest scores in the Denver metro area although my math score was VERY low. In Oct. 1966 a friend had a book on the Vietnam war titled “Vietnam! Vietnam!” Only then did I learn the truth about Vietnam and that the White House has ALWAYS been controlled by an economic elite that benefits the elite at the expense of the taxpayers. I dropped out of college in my 3rd semester and returned to Denver to join a large community organization that opposed the Vietnam and twice refused to be inducted and sent to Vietnam since leaving college made me eligible to be drafted. I was found guilty after my 2 refusal to go to Vietnam and was incarcerated for 3 months and was released and my FELONY conviction was nullified. I have been a critic of EVERY White House administration, aka military/industrial complex, since 1968. The “data centers” [and Flock cameras] are part of the military industrial complex
Was this land that the family recently bought, hoping to capitalize on Cheyenne’s expansion? No….it’s been in the family for years. Private land, owners have no obligation to justify who they sell their land too as long as it meets the local planning ordinances. Get a grip people…..this is not a news worthy event. I have never been a Lummis supporter, but I’m not going to hang her for this. Instead let’s let it percolate and see what comes next.
Yes, but she pushed this stuff in her official capacity as an elected official.
The rich get richer and the rest of us eat stale cake.
I kind of miss the old days when politicians were at least discreet about financial gains from being in a position of power.
Well, it’s long past due for Cynthia to leave political office. When your votes and your bills concerning your personal wealth are involved time to go. Political corruption. she really hasn’t done much for Wyoming at all unless you’re an oil guy or a rancher here she might’ve helped you, housing and inflation is high in Wyoming and wages are low. Cynthia‘s wages are high. I’m with Chuck Gray no more data centers in Wyoming.
Ha ha. Chuck Gray is going to have to decide whether he is Trump’s biggest supporter, or whether he is against data centers. Take a look at the photographs from the indoor inauguration to see how many Silicon Valley tech giants were in the front row. Look at the donors to the ball room. If Gray is elected, I predict he will instantly fall in line with the administration, which is doing whatever Silicon Valley billionaires tell them to do.
I agree Lisa. This particular group of MAGA republican’s (Gray, Rasner, Friess, Chapman, etc.), running for office in Wyoming, are once again saying the “right” things and making promises they have no intention of keeping, to voters that don’t question any of it because they have an (R) next to their names just as Trump has done previously. It doesn’t take a genius to discern that it’s all lies and bull**** at this stage of the game. If individuals such as these, with such low moral and ethical standards are elected, Wyoming can expect more division and corruption from the same people that they were foolish enough to elect in the coming years…and don’t let the door hit you in the a** on your way out Cynthia.
So, a multigenerational family that has accumulated a lot of land and developed many business over the years has sold a small portion to Microsoft. This would be a non-story if one of the family members was not a conservative Republican Senator. I’m pretty sure the Senator is not “running” any of those family interests so why the controversy. I guess economic growth and development is fine in Wyoming as long as it comes from the approved political side,
Maybe the title of crypto queen shows a conflict of interest.
“Microsoft established its existing data center southeast of Cheyenne on 249 acres of Lummis-family land in the Bison Business Park in 2021, a subdivision created through a fast-track planning process.” I’m sure her position didn’t have anything to do with the subdivision getting fast track approval. To her credit at least she put her MS and bitcoin holdings into a blind trust, more than Drowsy Don did.
There you go folks, no corporate business tax for the wealthy, and a Wyoming congressional member in their pocket- who also reaps the benefits of data centers. Are these the sort of grifters that you want running our state? Think about that when you vote.
‘Oh give me a home where the grifters don’t roam and the deer and the antelope play. Where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the sky’s are not cloudy all day.’💔🇺🇸
I wonder how her dad feels about that sale? I grew up with that family. Her dad was a man, I fenced with at 18. He ask me on day what are your going to do are going to stay in Wyoming, 1969. I said yes sir, well your going to lose it. Shocked by his statement, I asked how? His reply was Wyoming does’nt have a income tax and rich will buy her up. Now that reason alone I have never forgotten. Today this article hurt , her other two sisters, chris and kalida were not mentioned, just power and greed of which she knows well…
Amazing there hasnt been a Revolution.
I can think of no populace in history more apathetic than the American people.
The ruling elite are laughing.