'125x Return' The Investment Emperor Farmer Who Turned 800 Million Won Land into 100 Billion Won

Microsoft Building Wisconsin Data Center
Pays 120 Billion KRW for Rural Land Valued at 800 Million KRW

A farmer in the United States who sold land worth 800 million won for 100 billion won is making headlines.

On the 23rd (local time), according to The Verge and the Milwaukee Business Journal, the Kroiser family, farmers in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, sold 407 acres (about 500,000 pyeong) of farmland for $76 million (about 100 billion won). The buyer of their land was Microsoft.

Farmland of the Kroizer family sold to Microsoft for 100 billion KRW.
[Photo by Google Maps]

Microsoft purchased the farmland at 125 times its market value. The original market value of the land was $600,000 (about 800 million won). The media reported that the Kroiser family used the land for farming and that it was famous as a pumpkin farm attraction known as the "Giant Pumpkin Farm's land."

Microsoft spent over $100 million just on the land purchase and is known to have additionally acquired 641 acres of land beyond the 407 acres from the Kroiser family.

Microsoft plans to invest $1 billion in the area to build a large-scale data center. A data center is a space densely packed with numerous server computers. It is used to provide Azure cloud services to customers.

Mount Pleasant was previously the site where Taiwanese iPhone manufacturer Foxconn proposed to build a manufacturing facility in 2017, offering three times the market price, but the Kroiser family refused to sell, causing the plan to fall through. At that time, the family was not opposed to selling the land but wanted a higher price, according to the media.

Regarding the sale, David Vans, the lawyer representing the Kroiser family, said, "We hope the town and Microsoft do well, and we would appreciate it if people respect our privacy."

According to the Milwaukee Business Journal, Microsoft’s data center is expected to create 200 jobs in the first phase, with an additional 460 jobs possible after completion.

As AI competition intensifies, major tech companies like Microsoft are investing heavily in building data centers in rural areas of the United States, considering computing power and energy consumption.

Accordingly, rural areas in the U.S., such as Mount Pleasant in Wisconsin, are becoming new hubs of development.