Amazon Buys GWU Virginia Campus for $427 Million and Faces AWS Outages After Drone Strikes
Amazon Data Services acquired George Washington University’s Virginia Science and Technology campus for $427 million as part of its $35 billion Virginia investment plan through 2040. Drone strikes hit AWS zones in the UAE and Bahrain, causing outages for EC2, S3 and DynamoDB and prompting recommendations to shift workloads to other regions.
1. Acquisition of Virginia Science and Technology Campus
On March 2, Amazon Data Services purchased the George Washington University’s Virginia Science and Technology campus for $427 million, marking the latest step in Amazon’s commitment to invest $35 billion in Virginia infrastructure through 2040.
2. Amazon Leo Broadband Deal with Vodafone/Vodacom
Amazon Leo secured an agreement with Vodafone and Vodacom to provide low Earth orbit satellite backhaul for remote 4G and 5G mobile masts, enabling up to 1 Gbps download speeds and enhancing network resilience, with the first sites expected to go live in Germany in 2026 and subsequent rollout across Africa.
3. AWS Infrastructure Damaged by Drone Attacks
Drone strikes on AWS availability zones in the UAE and Bahrain caused facility damage leading to outages of EC2, S3 and DynamoDB services, prompting Amazon to deploy software mitigations, begin prolonged restoration efforts and advise customers to back up data or migrate workloads to other regions.