If you regularly collect form submissions in WordPress, then exporting that data manually can quickly become a chore. Whether you’re tracking leads, orders, or feedback, downloading all those entries one by one takes time, and it’s easy to miss something important.
Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t offer a built-in way to auto export form entries. But with WPForms, I discovered that I could automate the entire process using their export tool—no need to install extra plugins or mess with custom code.
Instead of manually downloading CSV files or copying data from the dashboard, WPForms saves entries in clean, structured files on a schedule you can control.
In this guide, I’ll show you how to set up automatic form exports in WPForms so that your submissions stay organized without any extra effort.
Why Auto Export WordPress Form Entries?
Automatically exporting WordPress form entries lets you save and organize data from those form submissions without any manual effort.
Instead of logging in to download submissions every time someone fills out a form, you can automatically send the data to your email, cloud storage account, or another connected app.
It’s a simple way to keep everything sorted, backed up, and accessible, without having to think about it.
Most WordPress website owners rely on forms to collect leads, orders, feedback, or bookings. But once submissions start adding up, manually managing them takes more and more time. That’s where auto export becomes really useful.
With automatic exports, you can:
Back up form entries to a location you control.
Cut down on repetitive admin work.
Keep your data organized and easy to access.
Avoid missing or overlooking submissions.
Simplify your reporting and follow-up process.
Once it’s running, auto export takes care of everything in the background, so you can focus on the work that actually moves your site forward.
Now, I’ll show you how to auto export form entries using WPForms:
The best way to auto export WordPress form entries is by using WPForms, which is the best contact form plugin for WordPress.
It comes with a powerful Entry Automation addon designed exactly for this purpose.
Whether you want to email reports regularly, back up submissions to Google Drive, or automatically delete entries after they’re processed, this addon quietly handles everything in the background—no manual steps required.
At WPBeginner, we use WPForms ourselves to create all kinds of forms, from simple contact forms to our annual reader survey.
We’ve also tested all its features thoroughly and included them in our detailed WPForms review.
It’s one of those tools that just works and saves us time behind the scenes, which is why I confidently recommend it to beginners and pros alike.
Plus, getting started with it is quick and easy.
Step 1: Install and Activate the WPForms Plugin
First, you need to install and activate the WPForms plugin.
👉 Note: WPForms offers a free version that you can use to create basic contact forms. However, the Entry Automation addon is only available with the Elite plan.
Upon plugin activation, you have to activate your license key. To do this, go to the WPForms » Settings page in your WordPress dashboard and add your license key.
You can get this information from your account area on the WPForms website. This will unlock all the features available in your plan, including access to premium addons like Entry Automation.
Now that your license is active, head over to the WPForms » Addons page from your WordPress admin sidebar.
Here, look for the ‘Entry Automation Addon’ in the list. Once you find it, click the ‘Install Addon’ button to activate it on your website.
Step 2: Set Up the Form You’ll Use for Automatic Exports
Now that WPForms and the Entry Automation addon are active, it’s time to create the form with the entries you want to export automatically.
To get started, visit the WPForms » Add New page in your WordPress dashboard and a name for your form.
Then, you can either choose a premade template like a contact form, registration form, or feedback form—or build one from scratch using the drag-and-drop builder.
If you want to speed things up even more, WPForms includes an AI Form Builder that can generate a complete form for you in seconds.
All you have to do is type in a short prompt, like ‘a simple customer feedback form,’ and the AI will instantly create a form with the right fields, layout, and structure. I’ve tested this feature myself, and it works really well.
Now, you will be taken to the visual builder where you can easily customize your form by dragging fields from the left panel into your form layout on the right.
You can add fields like Name, Email, Dropdowns, Checkboxes, File Upload, and more based on the type of information you need to collect.
If you’d like more help building the right form, I’ve got you covered. At WPBeginner, we’ve written step-by-step tutorials to walk you through different form types:
Once your form looks good, you can configure its confirmation email settings. Then, click the ‘Save’ button at the top to store your changes.
Step 3: Set Up Automatic Export for Your Form Submissions
Now that your form is ready, it’s time to automate your exports so that you don’t have to manually download form entries ever again.
To do this, switch to the Settings » Entry Automation tab in the WPForms builder. This is where you’ll manage everything related to automatic exporting and deleting entries.
To begin, click the ‘Add New Task’ button.
Once you do that, a prompt will open up, where you have to give a name to your task. I recommend choosing something clear like ‘Weekly Contact Form Export to Email’ so it’s easy to remember later.
This task will be like setting up a small workflow for your form. You can even create multiple tasks for one form, such as one task to send weekly email reports and another to back up entries to Google Drive.
After entering the name, click the ‘OK’ button to move forward.
Next, you’ll be asked to choose a task type.
WPForms gives you two options: Export Entries and Delete Entries. For now, you need to select the ‘Export Entries’ option.
You can always come back later and set up a deletion task if needed. For example, to automatically remove old submissions after 30 days.
After choosing to export entries, you’ll see a few settings related to how your export file should be named. You can type a name manually, but I recommend using Smart Tags.
These tags can automatically pull in things like the form name or the date, which helps keep your files organized without any extra work on your part.
Just click the Smart Tag icon to see your options and insert the ones that make sense for you.
Next, let’s talk about how your form entries will be exported and where they’ll end up. I recommend choosing your file format first — this determines how your data will be organized when it’s sent out.
WPForms gives you several file types to pick from, and each one has its own advantages:
CSV – The default option, perfect for spreadsheet tools like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.
Excel (XLSX) – This format preserves basic styling and structure, making reports look cleaner and more professional right out of the box. I recommend this option if you plan to share the file directly with clients or non-techy people who use Microsoft Excel.
PDF – Great for clean, printable summaries. I like this option when I want something polished to share in a meeting.
JSON – Best suited for developers or users integrating the data into other systems or apps.
Once that is done, it’s time to decide where the exported file should go.
WPForms lets you automate this too, so you don’t have to manually send or upload anything. Here are your destination options:
Google Drive – Save a copy of the export directly to your Google Drive account.
Dropbox – Store the file in your Dropbox folder for easy sharing and access.
FTP – Upload the export to a server using FTP. This option is designed for more advanced users or developers who need to send data to a custom application or a separate server.
Once you select your destination, WPForms will walk you through the connection steps.
For example, if you choose ‘Email’, then you will need to add the email address where the entries would be sent. On the other hand, if you choose Dropbox, then you will have to integrate it with WPForms.
However, you don’t need to worry, since the plugin makes the process super beginner-friendly. Just follow the steps on the screen.
Step 4: Choose Form Fields and Apply Entry Filters Before Exporting
After setting your export format and destination, scroll down to configure what data should be included in the export and whether you want to filter the entries.
First, you’ll see the ‘Entry Information’ section. This area is neatly divided into two parts: Form Fields and Additional Information, giving you full control over what gets shared.
Under ‘Form Fields’, you’ll see the actual fields from your form—like Name, Email, and Comment or Message. Just check the boxes for the fields you want to include.
If you’re exporting a longer form with multiple inputs, you can use the ‘Select All’ option to save time.
Then there’s the ‘Additional Information’ section. This includes extra details that WPForms tracks automatically, like Entry ID, Entry Date, Entry Notes, and Type.
You can select any combination of these fields to customize your export. I’ve found this especially useful if you only need a few key pieces of information for a weekly report or want to hide internal notes before sharing a file externally.
Below that is the ‘Filter’ section. This is where you can narrow down your export to include only the entries that meet certain conditions—for example, submissions from a certain date range or entries that include specific responses.
By default, WPForms sets the filter to ‘Any Field contains’, but you can customize this to narrow down entries based on specific form fields and values.
For example, if your contact form includes a dropdown like ‘Reason for Contact’, you could filter to only export entries where the reason is ‘Support Request’ or ‘Business Inquiry’.
This helps keep your exports focused on the types of messages you care about most.
You can also filter based on the status of the entry. WPForms lets you choose whether to include entries that are Published, Abandoned, or marked as Spam.
I recommend this filter if you want clean, finalized submissions in your export, or if you want to analyze incomplete or flagged messages separately.
Additionally, you can choose to export all contact form entries or just the new submissions since your last export. This is a useful option for automating reports without duplicating data.
Once you’ve chosen which fields and filters to apply, WPForms will tailor the export exactly to your needs.
Step 5: Schedule WordPress Form Entries Export
Once your export settings and filters are in place, the final step is to schedule when you want WPForms to run the export automatically.
For this, scroll down to the ‘Schedule’ section.
You can start by choosing how often the export should happen. You can set it to run daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on how often you need updates.
Next, pick the specific day(s) you want the export to run—like every Monday or the 1st of each month. You also need to add a start date and, optionally, an end date if you’re only exporting for a limited time.
WPForms will run the export at midnight by default, but you can customize the time of day to fit your team’s workflow or reporting schedule.
Once that’s done, the plugin takes care of the rest—automatically generating and sending the export file exactly as you configured.
💡Bonus Tip: To start collecting entries, you’ll also need to embed the form you just configured into a page on your website. For details, check out our step-by-step guide on how to embed forms in WordPress.
Step 6: Add a Task to Delete Form Entries After Export (Optional)
Once your form is live and the automation is running, you can go one step further by setting up a separate task to delete the entries after they’ve been exported.
WPForms doesn’t bundle this into the export task itself. Instead, you’ll need to create a new task with the ‘Delete Entries’ option and configure it to run after the export.
Don’t forget to toggle the ‘Run After Previous Task’ switch to make sure the tasks run in sequence.
You can even drag to reorder the tasks, so deletion only happens once the data has been safely exported.
This is a great way to keep your WordPress database lean and prevent data bloat. A smaller database helps your site run smoothly and makes your website backups smaller and faster to complete.
Step 7: Monitor Everything from the Automation Dashboard
If you’re managing multiple forms or scheduling regular exports, then having a clear overview of all your automated tasks is a game-changer.
The Automation Dashboard in WPForms makes this easy by showing all active tasks in one place.
I found this incredibly helpful when testing the feature because it gave me instant visibility into what was running, when, and whether everything was working as expected.
You can access it by going to the WPForms » Tools » Entry Automation page, where you’ll be able to:
View all forms with automation tasks configured.
Review task types, schedules, and current status.
Confirm whether export or delete tasks have run successfully.
It’s the simplest way to stay organized and ensure everything is running exactly as planned.
🔄 Bonus: Take Automation Even Further with Uncanny Automator
Automatically exporting data from your WordPress forms is just one way you can save time. I also recommend setting up more automated workflows with Uncanny Automator.
It is the best WordPress automation plugin and comes with built-in integration for WPForms, so you can trigger powerful workflows the moment someone submits a form.
While WPForms’ Entry Automation is perfect for managing the entries themselves (like exporting or deleting them), Uncanny Automator lets you use a form submission as a trigger to perform actions in other plugins or apps.
For example, you can automatically send a notification to Slack, create a new user account, enroll someone in a course, or even generate a WooCommerce coupon when someone fills out a form.
This can save you tons of time and streamline tasks that used to take hours. It’s a great way to level up your site’s automation without writing any code.
Frequently Asked Questions About WordPress Form Entries
Here are some questions that are frequently asked by our readers about auto exporting WordPress form entries:
What are the limitations of using email to auto export form data?
The main limitation is that the data isn’t stored in a central dashboard. Instead, it lives in your email inbox. That means you’ll need to manually sort, organize, or back up the data if you want to keep records long-term.
There’s also a higher risk of missing something important if your inbox gets cluttered.
In my experience, this setup works well for smaller sites or solo business owners who just want a quick way to check form entries without logging into WordPress.
But as your site grows, you might need something more scalable.
When that time comes, WPForms makes it easy to switch to cloud storage options like Dropbox or Google Drive, so your entries are always backed up and easy to manage.
Is there a way to stop form spam from being exported?
Yes. WPForms includes built-in spam protection tools like Google reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, and its own smart honeypot feature that help block junk submissions before they ever reach your inbox.
On top of that, WPForms also has a form entry filter that ignores abandoned or partial form submissions. That means your exports only include complete and legitimate entries, which saves time and keeps your records clean.
Yes, this helps keep your database clean and optimized. When you export entries and then delete them from WordPress, you avoid unnecessary data buildup. This makes backups faster and your admin area more responsive.
Will auto-exporting form entries slow down my WordPress site?
No, auto-exporting form entries won’t affect your site’s speed if set up correctly.
The export process happens in the background, so visitors won’t notice any slowdown when submitting a form. Think of it like a scheduled task on your computer—it runs quietly at a set time without interrupting what you’re doing.
I didn’t experience any performance issues during testing, even on a site with multiple forms running.
Though Yaccarino does not have experience in health tech, eMed said in a press release that they sought her out for her "undeniable ability to negotiate new partnerships."
The European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act, known as the EU AI Act, has been described as “the world's first comprehensive AI law” by the European Commission.
Slowed tech progress, inflation, and global trade wars are doing a number on game console pricing this year, and the bad news keeps coming. Nintendo delayed preorders of the Switch 2 in the US and increased accessory prices, and Microsoft gave its Series S and X consoles across-the-board price hikesin May.
Today, Nintendo is back for more, increasing prices on the original Switch hardware, as well as some Amiibo, the Alarmo clock, and some Switch and Switch 2 accessories. The price increases will formally take effect on August 3.
The company says that there are currently no price increases coming for the Switch 2 console, Nintendo Online memberships, and physical and digital Switch 2 games. But it didn't take future price increases off the table, noting that "price adjustments may be necessary in the future."
After experiencing colorized Virtual Boy emulation for ourselves (and grabbing the sample screenshots you can see in this piece), we were struck by just how much a splash of color adds new life to Nintendo's failed '90s experiment (which Ars' own Benj Edwards has written about extensively). Going beyond the usual red-and-black graphics helps to highlight the artistry in the small selection of official Virtual Boy games and provides a great excuse to check out the system's surprisingly vibrant homebrew scene.
Red in the face
Nintendo famously chose to use a line of (then cheap and abundant) red LEDs for the Virtual Boy's stereoscopic display, leading to its iconic monochromatic color palette. While the handful of '90s Virtual Boy developers did their best under this limitation, the hardware's red-on-black graphics have aged even worse than the often muddy grayscale found on the original Game Boy.
Whistle pet trackers are headed to the Internet of Things (IoT) graveyard. After releasing its first product in 2013, the Seattle-based Whistle has just been acquired by a competitor that has decided to brick all of Whistle's smart GPS and activity monitors.
Tractive, an Austrian company that has also been selling Internet-connected GPS trackers for pets since 2013, on Monday announced its acquisition of Whistle from Mars Petcare, as spotted by The Verge. Mars Petcare is the pet food subsidiary of Mars Inc (which also makes candies like M&M’s), and it acquired Whistle in 2016 for $117 million.
Tractive bought Whistle to expand its business in the US. Until September 30, Whistle owners can get Tractive devices to replace the Whistle trackers that Tractive is bricking. People currently paying for a Whistle subscription will see their subscriptions transferred to their new Tractive device. People with a Whistle device but no subscription must “pay for a Tractive subscription” in order to get a replacement device, Tractive’s website says. Tractive subscriptions start at $108 per year.
That's because, like in business itself, there is often a first-mover advantage for job seekers who respond quickly to open roles and overtures from employers, according to data from job sites.
Applying to a role within the first 10 minutes of getting a relevant job alert can boost your chance of hearing back by as much as four times, LinkedIn found.
Haste can also pay off throughout the process, especiallywhen it comes to responding to those doing the hiring.
In the US, job seekers who reply to a prospective employer's message within 24 hours are 4.1 times as likely to get hired and 6.7 times as likely to get an interview, according to data Indeed shared with Business Insider.
"Speed is not just an edge, it's a signal," said Patrice Lindo, CEO of Career Nomad, a platform that helps professionals navigate career changes. "It says, 'I'm ready. I'm visible. I'm serious. I'm a decision-maker.'"
She recommends that clients apply for jobs within the first four to eight hours of seeing a posting.
"They're far more likely to be seen and even considered," Lindo told BI.
A sign of intent
The difference that speed can make matters because, for many desk workers, the pace of hiring has gone from blazing fast a few years ago to sluggish.
The overall job market remains strong, yet some companies are taking their time to hire as they try to gain insights into factors such as how tariff vacillations could affect the economy and how quickly artificial intelligence could take on certain tasks.
That's why, in this market, moving quickly isn't a sign of desperation, but rather of intent, Lindo said.
Another reason to be speedy is that once an employer has a sufficient number of résumés, they're likely to stop looking at whatever else trickles in, Susan Peppercorn, an executive and career coach, told BI.
She advises clients that, most of the time, it's not worth it to apply for a role when the number of applicants reaches 100.
Peppercorn, like Lindo, said that moving fast can send a positive signal when communicating with a would-be employer.
"Responding within 24 hours anybody can do, but responding within the first hour shows that you're really, really interested," Peppercorn said.
Doing your homework quickly
Moving fast doesn't give you a license to be sloppy, of course. It's still better to tailor your applications to each job and to include a cover letter that, at the very least, mentions the employer's name and the role you're going after.
Customizing an application while also moving fast can be challenging, but it's doable if you're prepared. Lindo likened it to how a pregnant woman might prepare a bag packed with essentials for the hospital. Translation: Have a strong résumé ready to go.
That way, it only needs small adjustments, depending on the opportunity, she said.
Peppercorn recommends limiting what you tweak to create a solid but speedy application. She said job applicants should focus on the top summary section of their résumé and, where possible, leave the other sections alone.
The edits you make to the top should incorporate some of the key words contained in the job posting, Peppercorn said.
While it's a good idea to include a cover letter, she said, the software that many employers use to collate applications often strips off that layer to focus on the résumé itself. So, Peppercorn said, a perfunctory cover letter with some modest customization might often suffice.
In any case, don't take too long. Otherwise, you risk missing out because some employers close openings within five to 10 days, Lindo said.
Even if an employer doesn't take down a listing, if you're still perfecting your résumé on day eight, "you've already missed the window," she said.
Lindo added that some employers are likely to think that applicants who move quickly would also apply that approach to the job.
"It's an indicator of how you will operate if you were to be chosen," she said.
Do you have a story to share about your job search? Contact this reporter at [email protected].
The long-running video game series Assassin's Creed will get a live-action TV series adaptation. Variety and The Hollywood Reporter report that Netflix has greenlit the series after years of development hell; the intention to produce the series was announced in 2020.
The series had been through multiple creative teams even before it was greenlit, but Netflix settled on two co-showrunners. Roberto Patino, a writer on FX's Sons of Anarchy and HBO's Westworld, will join David Wiener, who led Paramount+'s Halo TV series as well as Fear the Walking Dead.
The two released a joint statement with the news that the show is moving forward:
April Walker, Director at Universal Display Corporation (NASDAQ:OLED), acquired 342 shares valued at $53,926.56 through a grant or award, as reported in a Form 4 filed on July 2, 2025.
Transaction summary
Metric
Value
Shares Traded
342
Transaction Value
$53,927 (rounded from $53,926.56, as reported in SEC Form 4 filed July 2, 2025)
Post-Transaction Shares
684
Post-Transaction Value
$107,853 as of July 2, 2025
Price vs. MA50
4.94% above the 50-day moving average as of July 10, 2025
YTD Performance
(28.12%) 1-year change on a calendar year basis
Key questions
How does this transaction compare to April Walker's historical trading activity? The trade size of 342 shares matches both the median and 75th percentile for April Walker, consistent with prior activity (median and 75th percentile trade size: 342 shares; trading frequency: 5.7 trades per year; most recent trade: 91 days ago).
What is the significance of the current stock price relative to key technical levels? The transaction price of $157.68 is 4.94% above the 50-day moving average and 0.29% above the 200-day moving average, as of July 10, 2025.
How meaningful is the Director's ownership on an absolute basis? Following the transaction reported on July 2, 2025, April Walker holds 684 shares, representing approximately 0.0014% of shares outstanding—a nominal ownership stake for a director.
What is the context of this transaction within the broader performance trend? Year-to-date performance stands at (28.12%) as of July 10, 2025 (calendar year-to-date, based on the latest available closing price), reflecting significant underperformance, though insider equity awards have continued on a regular schedule.
Company overview
Metric
Value
Market capitalization
$7.38 billion
Trailing-twelve-month revenue
$648.70 million
Net income (TTM)
$229.67 million
Dividend yield
1.10%
Company snapshot
Universal Display develops and commercializes proprietary organic light-emitting diode (OLED) materials and technologies, supplying UniversalPHOLED materials to display and lighting manufacturers. The company generates revenue primarily through material sales, technology licensing, and contract research services related to OLED and advanced materials. It serves display and solid-state lighting manufacturers, with a focus on global electronics and display panel producers.
Universal Display Corporation is a leading innovator in OLED technology, leveraging a robust intellectual property portfolio with approximately 5,500 issued and pending patents worldwide. The company’s strategy centers on providing high-performance OLED materials and licensing its proprietary technologies to major display and lighting manufacturers. Its competitive edge lies in its deep R&D capabilities.
Foolish take
All of Universal Display's directors receive 342 shares per quarter, as part of their compensation packages. This was April Walker's second batch of share-based payments since joining the company's board of directors on January 1, 2025.
Walker's appointment filled an empty seat that was created when Universal Display expanded its board from 10 to 11 members. With more than three decades of executive experience in large-cap companies such as Microsoft and Salesforce, Walker brings a wealth of expertise in areas like cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI).
The stock awards are likely to build Walker's Universal Display exposure over time. Most of the company's directors seem content to amass their stock holdings slowly, currently at 342 shares per quarter, rarely selling any stock or making additional purchases.
As such, this transaction is simply an early instance of a long-term relationship. Investors could draw more substantial conclusions from the larger and more frequent trades performed by Universal Display executives, such as Chief Legal Officer Mauro Premutico and CEO Steven Abramson, but even there, most of the transactions are of the pre-planned variety.
In other words, insider transactions should neither worry nor inspire Universal Display investors at the moment. It's just business as usual.
Glossary
Form 4:A required SEC filing disclosing insider trades by company officers, directors, or major shareholders. Insider trading: The buying or selling of a company’s stock by individuals with access to non-public, material information. Grant or award: Shares or options given to employees or directors, often as part of compensation or incentive plans. 50-day moving average (MA50): The average closing price of a stock over the past 50 trading days, used to identify trends. 200-day moving average: The average closing price over the past 200 trading days, often used to assess long-term trends. Ownership stake: The percentage of a company’s total shares held by an individual or entity. Trailing-twelve-month (TTM): A financial metric calculated over the most recent 12 consecutive months. Dividend yield: Annual dividend payments divided by the stock price, showing the income return on investment. Intellectual property portfolio: A collection of patents, trademarks, and copyrights owned by a company, providing competitive advantages. Technology licensing: Granting other companies the right to use proprietary technology in exchange for fees or royalties. Material sales: Revenue generated from selling physical products or substances, such as specialized materials for manufacturing. Contract research services: Research and development work performed for clients under formal agreements, often for a fee.
Where to invest $1,000 right now
When our analyst team has a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,053%* — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500.
They just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now, available when you joinStock Advisor.
Here are the winners of the Women in AI awards at VB Transform, in categories including entrepreneur, research, mentorship and responsibility.Read More
Marc Agnifilo (center) spoke to the press following the mostly successful jury verdict for Sean "Diddy" Combs. He was joined by Brian Steel (left), Teny Geragos (right), and Xavier Donaldson (far right).
Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images
Family and supporters of Sean "Diddy" Combs praised his legal "dream team" after the jury verdict.
The team was led by Marc Agnifilo, who is also representing Luigi Mangione.
It was rounded out by a row of other formidable lawyers.
They were up against a formidable government team. The US Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York is considered one of the most elite federal prosecutors' offices in America. And the team prosecuting Combs had Maurene Comey, one of the prosecutors who put Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell behind bars.
Combs, though, has an eye for star lawyers.
His previous defense team also won him an acquittal in 2001, when the Manhattan District Attorney's Office accused him of being involved in a nightclub shooting.
At that time, Combs' team was led by his longtime attorney Ben Brafman. For this year's trial, Brafman's protégé Marc Agnifilo was in the driver's seat.
Here's the "dream team" that defended Diddy:
Marc Agnifilo
The founding partner of Agnifilo Intrater LLP spent about two decades in the US Attorney's office in New Jersey before moving to private practice.
Before the Combs trial, he had a crushing jury verdict against his client, Keith Raniere, the founder of the NXIVM sex cult, who in 2020 was sentenced to 120 years in prison.
But Agnifilo has had high-profile victories, including representing former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who had sexual assault charges against him dropped.
Together with his wife, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Agnifilo is also representing Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
The 34-year-old Geragos, a partner at Agnifilo's firm, handled some of the trial's biggest moments, including the defense team's opening statement and multiple cross-examinations of important witnesses.
Before the trial, she vocally defended Combs on social media. And, years earlier, she represented Raniere along with Agnifilo.
Geragos has also represented Roger Ng, the ex-Goldman Sachs banker convicted in 2023 of siphoning billions of dollars from 1MDB, the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund.
Her father is celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos, who represents Combs' mother and consulted with the trial defense team.
The legal team for Sean "Diddy" Combs posed outside the courthouse after the trial. From left to right: Brian Steel, Alexandra Shapiro, Marc Agnifilo, Teny Geragos, Anna Estevao, Nicole Westmoreland, Jason Driscoll, and Xavier Donaldson.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Alexandra Shapiro
A former clerk for former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Shapiro is well-known in the New York bar for her appeals and white collar litigation.
In Combs' case, Shapiro raised multiple legal issues during the trial that could form the basis for an appeal. She also took the lead in bail arguments, unsuccessfully trying to keep Combs out of jail ahead of the trial and between the verdict and his sentencing hearing.
She's also the author of the 2022 legal thriller "Presumed Guilty" and is an avid nature photographer.
Jason Driscoll
An associate at Shapiro's firm, Shapiro Arato Bach, Driscoll crafted legal arguments about the scope of what witnesses were permitted to testify about at the trial and which exhibits should have been permitted to go into evidence.
He's previously worked at the Big Law firm Paul Weiss and has clerked for two federal judges in Manhattan.
Lawyer Anna Estevao cross-examines Casandra "Cassie" Ventura during Sean "Diddy" Combs' sex trafficking trial in New York City.
Jane Rosenberg/REUTERS
Anna Estevao
Estevao had one of the most difficult jobs in the trial, cross-examining Cassie Ventura, Combs' longtime partner, who prosecutors had designated as his primary victim and who was visibly pregnant while she was on the witness stand. (Ventura gave birth after her testimony, while the trial was ongoing.)
Estevao joined Combs' legal team while a partner at Sher Tremonte, a firm also representing him in many of the civil lawsuits against him and his companies. She joined the firm Harris Trzaskoma the same month the criminal trial began — a move that a source familiar with the matter said was in the works long before the trial.
Xavier Donaldson
An experienced New York City attorney, Donaldson also joined the Combs criminal case shortly before the trial began.
At the trial, Donaldson cross-examined Daniel Phillip, a male dancer who participated in freak offs with Ventura, and Deonte Nash, a friend of Ventura's.
Donaldson has also previously represented the "Chelsea bomber", Ahmed Rahimi.
Brian Steel
Fresh off a favorable plea deal for the rapper Young Thug in Atlanta, Steel joined Combs' legal team shortly before the trial.
He handled the cross-examination of one of Combs' assistants, as well as security officers at the InterContinental Hotel, where Combs beat Cassie Ventura in a hallway in a notorious incident caught on video.
Nicole Westmoreland
Another Atlanta-based lawyer involved in Young Thug's trial, Westmoreland officially joined the Combs legal team shortly before opening statements.
Westmoreland cross-examined Combs' accuser Dawn Richard and two friends of Ventura who corroborated some of her testimony.
Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway(NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B) has been managing investments for his company for roughly 60 years. For much of that time, he largely avoided trading in technology stocks, once stating:
Technology is based on change; and change is really the enemy of the investor. Change is more rapid and unpredictable in technology relative to the broader economy. To me, all technology sectors look like 7-foot hurdles.
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But there are always exceptions to the rule, and Berkshire Hathaway started buying Apple(NASDAQ: AAPL) stock in 2016 and invested in Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) beginning in 2019. These are two of the world's largest tech companies. Let's take a look at Buffett's seeming contradiction and maybe also determine whether these two blue chip stocks might fit into your portfolio.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Amazon invests in innovation to prolong its strong growth
Berkshire's stake in Amazon is a relatively small position in its nearly $285 billion stock portfolio (about 0.8%), valued at approximately $2.2 billion. It's likely that it was initially purchased in 2019 by one of Buffett's lieutenants. Nonetheless, Buffett has previously joked that he was "an idiot for not buying" the stock sooner.
Amazon's stock price has struggled of late, down about 1% so far in 2025 as it ramps up its capital expenditures to keep up in the artificial intelligence (AI) arms race. Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said capital expenditures could exceed $100 billion in 2025, driven by investments in data centers, chips, and AI infrastructure. That expense is up significantly from $48.1 billion in 2023 and $77.7 billion in 2024, reflecting the importance management puts on AI.
While the return on investment for AI may take a few years to materialize, Amazon continues to deliver results now. In Q1 2025, Amazon generated $155.7 billion in revenue, a 9% year-over-year increase. As for profitability, one metric Buffett prefers is operating earnings, a measure of a company's direct profits from its core operations that exclude volatile unrealized capital gains and losses resulting from its investments. Amazon delivered $18.4 billion in operating earnings for the quarter, representing year-over-year growth of 20.3%.
One area where Amazon's AI return on investment is already showing up is in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division. Specifically, management projected a $117 billion annual revenue run rate for AWS in 2025, with its Q1 increasing 17% year over year to $29.3 billion. CEO Andy Jassy underscored the growth on the company's most recent earnings call, saying: "Before this generation of AI, we thought AWS had the chance to ultimately be a multi $100 billion revenue run rate business. We now think it could be even larger."
Beyond its earnings growth, the balance sheet is in tremendous shape, with $41.2 billion in net cash. And as for Amazon's valuation, its stock looks undervalued compared to its historical averages. Specifically, Amazon stock trades at 34 times trailing earnings, close to a five-year low and well below its five-year median of 65 times trailing earnings.
Put it all together, and Amazon is the rare company that isn't afraid to invest in innovation to prolong its growth phase. It can afford to do so with a strong cash position and consistent earnings growth, making it a perfect buy-and-hold candidate for your portfolio.
2. Apple
Berkshire Hathaway first bought Apple stock in 2016, and despite trimming the position beginning in 2024, it remains the company's largest holding by far (21.2% of the portfolio). At the end of Q1 2025, Berkshire still owned over 300 million shares, worth north of $60 billion. Buffett has previously noted Apple is a "better business than any other we own [outright]."
In many ways, Apple checks every box for Buffett: iconic brand, loyal customers, and enormous cash generation. In its most recent quarter, its fiscal second quarter ended March 29, 2025, Apple generated $90.8 billion in revenue and $29.6 billion in operating income, year-over-year increases of 5% and 6%, respectively. Notably, revenue for the company's flagship product, the iPhone, only grew 2% year over year to $46.8 billion after the company faced a decline in the segment during its fiscal Q1 2025.
While Apple isn't spending as much proportionately as its peers on AI, it isn't ignoring it either. The company developed Apple Intelligence, a free, built-in AI system for its products, which CEO Tim Cook said in a 2024 earnings call "will transform how users interact with technology."
It could also boost its iPhone sales, considering the technology is only available on Apple's relatively newer hardware models, which may prompt more consumers to upgrade from their current devices. Apple hasn't broken out exact figures, but Cook recently noted that markets where the company rolled out Apple Intelligence saw "stronger" performance than those that hadn't.
As investors wait to see demand for Apple Intelligence develop, Apple rewards shareholders through continued share repurchases and dividends. In just the past five years, Apple has reduced its share count by nearly 13%, and more recently announced a $100 billion addition to its share repurchasing program. Buffett has called buybacks a way to benefit all owners, provided they're done at attractive valuations. "The math isn't complicated: When the share count goes down, your interest in our many businesses goes up," he said in a 2022 letter to shareholders. "Every small bit helps if repurchases are made at value-accretive prices."
Additionally, management has consistently paid and raised its dividend for 14 consecutive years. Today, the company pays a quarterly dividend of $0.26 per share, equating to an annual yield of 0.5%. Moreover, considering its payout ratio -- the percentage of earnings paid out as dividends -- is a lowly 16%, investors can reasonably expect annual dividend hikes for the foreseeable future.
Finally, despite the stock's recent decline of roughly 18% in 2025, it trades at 31 times its trailing earnings, slightly above its five-year median of 29 times. While that may give some investors pause, Apple's track record of innovation, shareholder returns, and support from Warren Buffett make a compelling case. For long-term investors concerned about valuation, dollar-cost averaging offers a disciplined way to build a position in one of the most iconic public companies ever.
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The Colorado River runs over 1,450 miles through seven US states, carving dramatic canyons and providing drinking water for 40 million people before it crosses into Mexico.
Overuse threatens to dry up this critical American artery, which sustains people from Denver to Los Angeles and feeds the crops of California's Imperial Valley and Arizona's Yuma region — two of the world's most productive agricultural areas.
Already, some homebuilders in Arizona have stopped work over fears their developments won't have enough water. Cotton farmers south of Phoenix have left thousands of acres unplanted. Los Angeles residents have stopped watering their lawns. States are renegotiating allocations guided by the 103-year-old Colorado River Compact.
Now, in some of the region's driest stretches, tech companies are bringing a massive influx of water-guzzling data centers.
Documents reviewed by Business Insider show that some of these large data centers, football-field-size warehouses filled with computer servers that power the artificial intelligence revolution, could each demand millions of gallons of water a day, enough for tens of thousands of Americans.
Business Insider found that 40% of the nation's planned and existing data centers are in areas that the nonprofit World Resources Institute, which focuses on sustainability research, has characterized as experiencing "extremely high" or "high" water scarcity. The share is even larger, 43%, for the biggest centers, those that use 40 megawatt-hours or more of electricity each hour.
Two companies stood out in BI's analysis as having the most data centers in high or extremely high water-stressed areas: Amazon, with 81, and Microsoft, with 23. As a share of their data centers, Microsoft ranks first with 52% in such arid spots.
The companies don't seek out locations that are arid — they go to places like Arizona for reasons including abundant land and stable supplies of electricity. They negotiate access with the local officials in cities and towns across the country, arguing that the investment, tax revenue, and other economic benefits they bring will be worth it. It can be an attractive proposition, even in parched places like Goodyear, Arizona, which has negotiated for years with Microsoft over a complex of data centers.
"It's been challenging because they are a big company, and we are a small city," said Bill Stipp, a former Goodyear City Council member who voted to approve various stages of the project despite his concerns about water.
Ben Wilsker, a Microsoft spokesman, said the company's agreement with the city of Goodyear "benefits both parties." He declined to comment on the company's industry-leading percentage.
Data centers historically have needed copious amounts of water to cool their multitudes of powerful computer chips. Use of less water-reliant cooling techniques is growing but remains much less common.
Amazon still prefers water-intensive evaporative cooling technologies, though not all its data centers use that method, said a company spokesperson.
Unlike farmers or golf courses that have learned to make do with recycled water, data centers that do use water for cooling overwhelmingly rely on fresh supplies.
Even before the AI boom, tech giants were known guzzlers. In 2018, the industry was already one of the 10 largest commercial or industrial water users in the US, according to a 2021 paper in Environmental Research Letters. These companies are now pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into expanding their data center operations.
Business Insider used permits that data centers must get for their backup generators to create a comprehensive list of facilities, and mapped the names and addresses onto the World Resources Institute's water scarcity tracker. We found 24 of the largest centers, and 379 smaller ones, in the four states now negotiating over Colorado River allotments. Other water-scarce areas across the US, in places including Texas and the upper Midwest, also host large, water-hungry facilities.
Fragmented oversight
It can be difficult to determine exactly how much water any given data center uses. Hundreds of water districts control the taps, and many decline to disclose customer usage data. The companies closely guard the secrecy of their projects, often using limited liability companies and nondisclosure agreements with local officials.
Business Insider records requests were often blocked in water districts in Western states experiencing acute water scarcity. In Colorado, for example, Denver Water asked data centers in its service area whether they would give permission to release their records. All but one said no.
The utility then initiated legal action to prevent disclosure. In Arizona, Tucson and Scottsdale would release only anonymized data, citing local privacy laws. When Business Insider obtained economic development agreements for data centers, many localities redacted the water use, with at least one citing commercial trade secrets. Still, some data emerged.
Water use can vary widely. A pair of Amazon facilities in Hermiston, Oregon, used 66.8 million gallons of water in 2023. In Mesa, Arizona, Meta struck an agreement allowing a facility to use up to 4 million gallons of water a day — enough for nearly 49,000 people, based on an Environmental Protection Agency estimate that Americans use 82 gallons a day.
Even those numbers understate the total impact. The 2021 research paper, which was done by scholars at Virginia Tech and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, found that only about a quarter of data centers' water use was direct, through cooling. The other 75% was used indirectly, through the electricity generation data centers depend on.
Many tech companies don't incorporate the demands of electricity generation in calculating their water use, said Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of computer engineering at University of California, Riverside.
"We know the lifecycle water footprint of almost every agriculture-related product," reads one of his recent presentations. "But we have almost zero information about AI's real water footprint."
Melanie Roe, a spokesperson for Meta, described the amount of water the company was permitted for as a "theoretical maximum" and said actual use was expected to be less.
A Google data center under construction in Mesa, Arizona. Google once sought permission to use up to 4 million gallons of water a day there, but now says it will use air cooling.
Jesse Rieser for BI
Across the West, public officials and utility managers are coming to grips with the increased demands on the region's water resources.
"The data centers bring up a little bit of a conundrum," Rebecca Mitchell, a member of the Upper Colorado River Commission who is the state's leader in the Colorado River talks, said in an interview. "If you're creating a larger draw on the system, you have to figure out where that comes from. And it's got to come from your own bank, not somebody else's."
Conserving water in Colorado
In Denver, the data center developer CoreSite withdrew its request for a $9 million tax break in October after the city council questioned the company's plan to use up to 805,000 gallons of water a day, or enough for 16,000 homes, The Denver Post reported. "I am very concerned about a tax incentive for a company that is using some of our most valuable resources," Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez said at an August council committee meeting.
In nearby Aurora, water officials have been among the most proactive in the country in limiting water use by data centers and other industrial superusers such as bottling plants and mines. Aurora has been one of the nation's fastest-growing large cities, and sees its water supply as a potential limiter on that growth.
"If you're going to come to Aurora," said Marshall Brown, Aurora Water's general manager, "you're going to have to figure out how to be efficient."
Several data center companies have gone to Aurora to meet with water officials, only to lose interest once they learned of its stringent water regulations, Greg Baker, then an Aurora Water spokesperson, said in August.
QTS, one of the nation's largest data center operators, with 34 US facilities by BI's count, has deployed a more expensive cooling technology that uses refrigerant for cooling. The annual water allocation for its facility in Aurora will be 525,600 gallons, according to Aurora Water records obtained by BI. That's less than what some facilities use in a single day, and equivalent to what a handful of restaurants might use, a QTS spokesperson said, adding that none of it would be used to cool the center's servers. Any more, and it will have to pay a surcharge, though that total doesn't include water for irrigation and other uses outside the QTS facility that are expected to require 1.1 million gallons of water a year, according to an Aurora Water official.
As of 2023, roughly half of the company's data centers used this water-conserving technology. A spokesperson for QTS, which is owned by the investment firm Blackstone, said none of the data centers the company had built since 2018 used water for cooling.
An agreement with Mesa allows Meta's planned data center to use up to 4 million gallons of water a day.
Jesse Rieser for BI
"A typical data center can consume up to 5 million gallons of water daily," QTS wrote in a 2023 white paper. "There is rising concern over how these facilities will impact water supplies, especially in areas that are already water-stressed. To be good neighbors, data centers need to adopt water conservation strategies."
Data centers in the desert
In August, Yadi Wang stood in the dried-out riverbed of a Colorado tributary about 100 miles southwest of Phoenix. The temperature was rapidly approaching triple digits, and it wasn't yet 10 a.m. Wang, the manager of Oatman Flats Ranch, explained how water once flowed through this stretch of the Gila River, populated by beavers and cottonwood trees. Now, he said, sporting a brimmed leather hat and Carhartt jeans, it's among the most barren places in the state.
"This is no different than the Sahara desert," Wang said, picking up a handful of the sandy soil. The bone-dry grains easily slipped through his fingers.
Since the 1990s, Arizona has been in an extended drought. Rising temperatures have only increased water needs. Phoenix set a record last year with 113 straight days of high temperatures at or above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Water access determines everything. In 1980, the state passed the Groundwater Management Act requiring cities and developers in some of the most populous areas to prove they had enough water for the next 100 years before they could break ground on a new project. Since then, the battle for water has only grown more intense. Gov. Katie Hobbs recently limited residential housing growth in an area outside Phoenix that failed to prove it had enough groundwater. Agricultural producers have set out to conserve water.
Yet, Arizona has become one of the country's largest data center markets. If all permitted Arizona data centers Business Insider identified go online, it will be the country's second-largest market after Virginia in terms of energy consumption and the sixth in terms of number of facilities, with 52. Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, features one of the nation's largest data center clusters, with 48 campuses.
Robust tax incentives, passed by state lawmakers in 2013, have propelled that growth. Companies flocked to the desert to take advantage of the free money, cheap and plentiful electricity, and affordable land. In 2021, lawmakers extended the breaks through 2033.
Power lines in Maricopa County, Arizona, where if all data centers with permits go online, Business Insider estimates they could consume as much electricity as 3.3 million US homes.
Jesse Rieser for BI
The state's fragmented system of water management hasn't kept pace. Water from the Colorado River is tightly regulated, and the 1980 law governs groundwater extraction near population centers, but wells outside those areas can operate largely without limit.
Big Tech firms can shop for municipalities willing to allocate the water that data centers require. They have found many takers, often in Phoenix's less prosperous outskirts, where officials in cities such as Goodyear and El Mirage have approved massive data center developments in recent years.
"The appetite of the council has been to welcome economic development into our city," Mayor Alexis Hermosillo of El Mirage said in an interview. Approving data centers, she added, was "in alignment with that thought process and those priorities."
5 million gallons a day
Ron Rayner has been watching as data centers go up to Phoenix's west. He and his family have farmed in Goodyear for decades, growing cotton, alfalfa, and other crops on land they own or lease. Their largely agricultural community has been transformed by development, including new Amazon warehouses, residential housing, and data centers.
Western Phoenix sprawls into the desert. The Microsoft data center in the suburb of Goodyear could use enough water for tens of thousands of Americans.
Jesse Rieser for BI
Several years ago, Rayner pinned an aerial photograph to his office wall showing the land he and his brothers at the A Tumbling-T Ranches had under cultivation. Any time an owner of land they leased sold one of the plots to developers, they put a big X on the parcel. Rayner estimates they've lost about 2,000 acres, roughly a third of the land they once farmed.
"This map has just got all these big X's all over it," Rayner said. "They're gone, they're done, you know. They'll never be back."
One of those leases, for 260 acres in Goodyear, was terminated in 2018. The new owner was Microsoft, which bought that land and another 19 acres for $48 million to build a data center campus.
Initial water plans for the campus didn't survive. Microsoft went to the city council seeking fast-track authority to start constructing the first two centers on the campus, which it proposed would be cooled through direct evaporative cooling, one of the more water-intensive cooling technologies.
According to Goodyear city documents, Microsoft planned for each of the five buildings on its Goodyear campus to use 1 million gallons of water a day, for a total of 1.83 billion gallons a year. On average, that's enough water for roughly 61,000 Americans, or a bit more than half the city's population.
Microsoft's purchase of the land gave it ownership rights to underground supplies, but the thought of sucking up that much water for data centers in such an arid climate was daunting.
"The water situation was a little scary in the beginning," Stipp, the former Goodyear City Council member, told Business Insider, saying early projections suggested the company would have needed more water than its supplies could have provided. "You look at it and say, 'Holy smokes, that's a lot of water.'"
Microsoft won fast-track approval. Stipp said that he thought the anticipated tax revenue from Microsoft was too good for Goodyear to pass up and that the city's water supplies could handle the demand. But the company and the city still needed to figure out how to handle the enormous flow of wastewater that would result. Microsoft planned to treat its water discharge and send it by pipeline to a Goodyear drinking-water treatment plant, city documents said. As long as the treated wastewater complied with pollution rules, it could be fed into Goodyear's drinking water supply.
Goodyear, outside Phoenix, agreed to expand its wastewater plant to process 3 million gallons a day to handle water discharged from Microsoft's data center.
Jesse Rieser for BI
Microsoft soon changed course: The discharge from its data centers would overwhelm Goodyear's infrastructure. "Microsoft," reads a March 2023 city council report, "has effectively abandoned its original plan."
Microsoft's new proposal would instead send discharge to the city's wastewater treatment plant, making it more difficult for it to later be used as the city's drinking water. Then, another amendment: Microsoft's wasted water was so voluminous, 1.2 million gallons a day, that it would overwhelm the wastewater treatment plant, too.
Finally, Microsoft agreed that any buildings it constructed after the first three would employ mechanical air cooling, which uses more energy but less water. Goodyear agreed to expand its wastewater plant to process 3 million more gallons a day, enough to handle Microsoft's flow, at a cost of $90 million. Microsoft covered $36 million of that, and Goodyear the rest.
Wilsker, the Microsoft spokesperson, said the company altered course after conducting a feasibility study and also paid $9 million for other water infrastructure. Its three facilities use direct evaporative cooling only at certain temperatures, reducing water's use in cooling to less than 40% of the year, he said. Goodyear officials told Business Insider that data centers bring jobs and other economic benefits, and that Microsoft's current water plan let it rely on its state-designated water rights, so it wouldn't draw from the city's official supplies.
The offsets game
Tech companies have set bold commitments to offset their water consumption.
Microsoft, with 44 US data centers already built or underway, according to BI's tally, has pledged to be water positive by 2030 despite consuming a net 2.1 billion gallons of water in 2023, its sustainability report said.
Meta has said it will "return more water to the environment than we consumed for our global operations" by 2030. It has 32 data centers built or permitted, 28% of them in high or extremely high water-stressed areas, by BI's count.
Google — with 47 permitted US data centers, 19% in those acutely arid locations, Business Insider found — pledged to "replenish 120% of the freshwater" it consumes by 2030. In 2023, Amazon pledged to be "water positive" by 2030. The company said it was 53% of the way there by the end of last year. QTS set a goal of reducing its "water usage effectiveness" by 5% each year.
Like QTS, other companies are developing water-saving technologies. Google uses nonpotable water sources for some cooling, and Devon Smiley, a spokesperson, said the company had switched a Mesa facility to air cooling and wouldn't use water to cool future data centers in areas seriously short on water.
Microsoft is moving toward a design at its newest data centers in the Phoenix area that uses minimal water thanks to a closed-loop liquid cooling system, said Alistair Speirs, a senior director for cloud infrastructure at the company. At older data centers, Microsoft relies on adiabatic cooling, which uses water to wet a mesh-like material and forces air through the material with big fans to cool it down. When the ambient outside air temperature is below 85 degrees, that air is brought inside to cool the servers.
In August, Microsoft said all new data centers would be designed to cool the servers at the computer chip level, eliminating the need for water other than to fill the system during construction.
Industry experts say much data center technology still relies on millions of gallons of drinking water. Steve Solomon, a Microsoft vice president in data center engineering, said in an interview that data centers require drinking water if their cooling technology involves wetting the air that circulates inside the data center. If humans are to inhale it, the water must be free of bacteria or other pollutants, he said.
Over 40% of data centers in the US are built in areas of high or extremely high water scarcity, including in Goodyear.
Jesse Rieser for BI
Google's data centers consumed 6.1 billion gallons of water in 2023, a 17% increase over the previous year, of which the vast majority was potable. In a 2024 report, Google said its data centers used the same amount of water needed for 41 golf courses in the Southwest. Ren, the UC Riverside researcher, calls the comparison "unfair at best," as many golf courses use wastewater, not drinking water, for irrigation.
Increasingly, municipalities in the arid West are deciding that data centers and other large water users require careful watching, and in some cases are pushing back on companies' asks.
In Mesa, where city officials limit water supplies to large users, Meta found a partner in the Gila River Indian Community, one of 30 tribes that live in the Colorado River Basin and the victor in a 2004 legal challenge that gave the community access to some of the river's contested water.
The water the community won would not only supply the needs of the 15,000 residents of its reservation just south of Phoenix, but also promised to power its economy.
The community partnered with a local utility to create Gila River Water Storage, which took the community's unused Colorado River allotment and created an underground reserve of 1.62 trillion gallons.
The community was standing by in 2021 when Mesa's officials told Meta it would need to find additional supplies for the water its proposed data center required. The city at the time limited large water users to about 500,000 gallons a day from city supplies (a cap it lowered last year), and Meta needed 2.5 times as much.
So Meta turned to Gila River Water Storage. Under a 25-year agreement with the city, the company purchased storage credits and transferred them to the city. Mesa then gave the company allowances that, provided Meta meets certain conditions, will let it pull up to 4 million gallons a day.
Meta contributed funds to the Navajo Water Project, an effort to provide drinking water to Navajo Nation residents.
Jesse Rieser for BI
Jenn Duff, a Mesa City Council member and self-proclaimed "desert rat" who has lived in the Southwest her entire life, was the only council member to vote against the deal. She said she was startled by a report from the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University that suggested Arizona might have less water than officials thought.
"We were in a severe drought, and we had a large water user coming in, and I started reading the publications, and I became alarmed," Duff said in an interview. She still carries around that report, its cover now torn, in her bag. "I just don't think water-cooled data centers should be in the desert."
According to the minutes of the vote, Mayor John Giles, who left office this year, voiced his support for the project and noted that the company had been informed about the need to purchase storage credits and advised about the need to be sensitive to water issues.
There's no guarantee that the water will be available through all of Meta's contract, as every claim on the Colorado's waters — including Indigenous allotments — is up for negotiation.
The Meta spokesperson told Business Insider that the company meets periodically with Mesa officials to ensure it stays in compliance with its water commitments to the city. Jason Hauter, a lawyer representing the Gila River Indian Community, said that while the future of available water supplies from the Colorado River was uncertain, "we do not foresee a future where this water supply is eliminated for central Arizona or for the Community in particular."
With less water-intensive cooling technologies still rare, companies have turned to a strategy known as "corporate water stewardship" to meet their goals. This involves paying other people to conserve water and then using a standard calculation to earn credits to offset the company's use.
Meta, for example, has helped fund drinking water access for the sprawling Navajo Nation and irrigation piping designed to prevent evaporation. In total, Meta has 12 projects in Arizona expected to restore 883 million gallons of water once they are built out, according to Roe, the spokesperson.
Microsoft, which also has purchased storage credits from Gila River Water Storage as part of its stewardship efforts, has also engaged in more controversial offset efforts as well. As part of a state conservation program, it helped fund compensation for the Colorado River Indian Tribes to leave 10,000 acres of farmland unplanted, a company report said, even though the practice of fallowing has fallen out of favor in the desert.
Drip irrigation on Arizona's Verde River conserves water for farming in the desert.
Jesse Rieser for BI
"When you fallow farmland in Arizona, you sterilize the land" by allowing nutrient-dense topsoil to blow away, said Dax Hansen, the owner of Oatman Flats Ranch. "It's just bad all the way around. The farmers make a little bit of money, but their land gets destroyed. You end up with more dust, more dust bowls, worse pollution, and all the rest."
"There is a healthy conversation about corporate water stewardship and how we manage it, and we are fortunate that the business community and corporations have been willing to do that," Kimberly Schonek, a project manager for The Nature Conservancy in Arizona, said in an interview. "We also want to be careful that we are not giving them cover."
Hannah Beckler and Rosemarie Ho contributed reporting.
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