foreign donors fuel us data center opposition, records show

Foreign billionaires and nonprofits have funneled tens of millions of dollars to activist groups fueling data center opposition across the United States, records show. Chief among them is Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, who has contributed nearly $14 million to four left-wing groups that signed a letter calling for a U.S. data center moratorium. Those groups are the Indivisible Project, Americans for Financial Reform, the Sierra Club, and Greenpeace USA, to which Wyss has contributed $7,455,000, $4,382,000, $2,107,400, and $50,000 as of March 2026, according to data compiled by the watchdog group Americans for Public Trust and highlighted in a new report from the American Energy Institute.

Another foreign billionaire, British hedge fund manager and climate activist Chris Hohn, has contributed $200,000 to Extinction Rebellion, which signed the same December 2025 letter calling on Congress to "support a national moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers." Five other signees, environmental groups 350.org, Friends of the Earth, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), the John Muir Project, New York Communities for Change, and Oil Change International, have taken sizable contributions from foreign sources.

They include the U.K.-based Oak Foundation, which has contributed $7.5 million to 350.org, $6,375,000 to GAIA, $550,000 to New York Communities for Change, and $4,000,000 to Oil Change International; and the Danish nonprofit KR Foundation, which has contributed nearly $1.1 million to 350.org, nearly $500,000 to Friends of the Earth, and nearly $1.9 million to Oil Change International. Another British organization, the Quadrature Climate Foundation, has contributed nearly $1 million to 350.org and $2.2 million to the John Muir Project.

Together, the three organizations, along with Wyss and Hohn, have contributed nearly $40 million to the letter's signatories. Wyss accounts for more than a third of that funding. A spokeswoman for his foundation distanced Wyss from the letter, saying that the Wyss Foundation "was not involved" and that its grants to groups behind the letter were "unrelated."

The revelation comes as opposition to data centers grows in the United States, and as U.S. policymakers take notice of the movement's ties to foreign entities. Opposition efforts blocked or delayed data center projects making up $152 billion in potential investment in 2025, according to Data Center Watch, a boutique research firm that tracks such efforts.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum recently attributed the rising opposition to foreign-funded climate organizations that have shifted their focus to opposing data centers as the climate movement has proved unpopular with the American public. "There are some states that are literally passing bans on AI data centers," Burgum said on May 18. "And it's not organic or local, some of this is foreign-sourced dark money coming in, and the people that used to fight on climate change have shifted. They don't talk about climate change because they've realized it's a losing argument, I can't get people excited about one degree of climate change, but man, I can lie to them about why their electric bill went up."

House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Brett Guthrie (R., Ky.) made similar remarks in March, saying, "Whoever controls the flow of data and AI isn't going to be one of the super powers but the super power, and there's only two countries that can do it, us or China. If you're China, what would you want to do to keep Americans from building data centers, how do you do that? You use our system of free press and the freedom of information to influence people." Businessman Kevin O'Leary has also attributed opposition campaigns against his data center projects in Utah to "Chinese-linked funding channels."

"Think about the incentive," he recently told Fox News. "If China is racing to dominate AI and compute capacity, why wouldn't they want to slow American infrastructure down?" Indeed, propaganda outlets controlled by China have promoted U.S. campaigns to oppose the construction of new data centers, the Washington Free Beacon reported. An October 2025 video from the English-language division of Beijing's state broadcaster, China Global Television Network, lamented that "energy-hungry data centers that have sprung up due to AI investments" are "sadly" causing a "major spike in energy prices," especially "on the West Coast, Mid-Atlantic, and New England."

A March piece from the Chinese Communist Party-controlled newspaper China Daily headlined "AI boom sends electricity bills in US skyrocketing," meanwhile, quoted a Siena University economics professor to argue that "electricity prices in the United States are emerging as a new source of economic strain" due to "surging power demand from data centers." China Daily subsidiary Global Times has published similar content. The Chinese government, and its media apparatus, is more friendly toward its own artificial intelligence industry. Beijing offers tech companies subsidies that cover up to half of the energy costs stemming from their data centers, and the Global Times has championed China's AI "tech advances," including "in the fields of humanoid robotics" and "large language models."

The aforementioned groups and donors, other than the Wyss Foundation, did not respond to requests for comment. The growing opposition to data centers in the US, fueled by foreign donors and nonprofits, has significant implications for the country's AI and compute capacity, and its ability to compete with China in the global tech landscape.