Texas Data Center Intel

Recent Texas data center news

• Mar 31, 2026

  Big Tech's $635 billion AI spending faces energy shock test, S&P Global says

  S&P Global’s Melissa Otto warned that massive AI-related investments face a major hurdle due to the Middle East crisis and rising energy costs.

  • Main announcement: Melissa Otto (head of research at S&P Global Visible Alpha) said planned AI capex could be revised if energy prices remain high, citing tech giants’ planned spending of about $635 billion in 2026 on data centres, chips and other AI infrastructure; she warned potential capex pullbacks in Q1–Q2 could be a catalyst for a “really meaningful correction in all equity markets”.
  • Background and details:CERAWeek (Houston, energy conference, last week) featured oil executives warning that supply risks are not fully reflected in prices; S&P Global data show capex rose from $80 billion in 2019 to $383 billion the prior year and $635 billion planned for 2026, and the article highlights that data centres require vast electricity, making AI spending sensitive to power prices and infrastructure capacity.
• Mar 31, 2026

  Microsoft Takes Over a Texas AI Data Center Expansion After OpenAI Backs Away

  Microsoft is taking over a data center construction project in Abilene, Texas from OpenAI.

  • Microsoft will work with Crusoe to build two new “AI factory” buildings and an on-site power plant in Abilene, Texas; the site is adjacent to Crusoe’s larger computing campus being built for OpenAI and Oracle.
  • OpenAI declined to pursue this specific project, prompting Microsoft to take it over; the nearby flagship OpenAI-Oracle site is part of the Stargate initiative that was publicly announced by President Donald Trump.
• Mar 31, 2026

  Germany-Based 3PL Leader Arvato Opens New Logistics Hub in Denton

  Arvato has opened a new logistics hub in Denton, Texas.

  • New Denton facility opened: Arvato’s Denton site is approximately 270,000 square feet total with 150,000 square feet initially allocated for operations; it is located with direct access to Interstate 35 and is about 40 minutes from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. The facility is engineered to provide high-security warehousing, specialized handling, and coordinated last-mile execution to support hyperscalers, cloud providers, and AI infrastructure companies.
  • Operational status and strategic purpose: Arvato has launched operations for its first client at the new site; the company says the hub will “significantly increase” operational capacity, build the logistics layer for next-generation AI infrastructure, and enable rapid deployment of sensitive hardware across North America.
• Mar 30, 2026

  No one wanted to redevelop this polluted property. Then came AI.

  Viridian Partners has proposed to buy Janesville’s 250-acre former GM site, remediate contamination, and build an $8 billion, 11-building, 800 MW data center campus.

  • Main announcement:Viridian Partners offers to purchase a 250-acre parcel owned by the city of Janesville, remediate soil contaminated with hydrocarbons, heavy metals and PFAS at an estimated $30 million cleanup cost, and construct an 11-building, 800 MW data center campus with development partner Abbleby Strategy Group; the proposal estimates ~600 permanent jobs and ~13,000 construction jobs, and includes working with Alliant Energy and American Transmission Company to build a new electrical substation.
  • Background and other details: The EPA released guidance (Jan 2026) identifying 335 brownfields potentially suitable for data centers; the article references other large projects such as the $15 billion Stargate data center (OpenAI & Oracle), notes a canceled $20 million EPA community change grant and an ineligible $773 million environmental trust, and documents local energy, emissions, public-health, and political concerns including proposed new natural gas peaking plants, a citizen ballot initiative, and legislative proposals to expand developer access to brownfields funding.
• Mar 27, 2026

  Crusoe Expands Abilene AI Campus With New 900 MW ‘AI Factory’ for Microsoft

  Crusoe has announced it is expanding its Abilene campus to add a 900 MW AI data center facility with behind-the-meter generation and battery storage.

  • Main announcement: Crusoe will add a 900 MW behind-the-meter power plant paired with battery storage at its Abilene site, bringing total planned capacity to roughly 2.1 GW (adjacent to its existing Abilene development). Construction on the Abilene project began in mid-2024 (first phase ~200 MW moved to operations in roughly a year); by early 2025 Crusoe had secured billions in financing to scale the campus to 1.2 GW across eight buildings, and the next construction phase is described as “soon underway.”
  • Background and other details: The original Stargate-linked deployment with Oracle and OpenAI has scaled back, and Microsoft has stepped in to secure large blocks of capacity. The build follows an “energy-first” design philosophy (power availability drives site selection) and explicitly uses behind-the-meter generation to mitigate grid/interconnection constraints; implementation timelines note rapid first-phase delivery and that further construction phases are imminent.
• Mar 27, 2026

  Form Energy signs 12GWh agreement to supply multi-day iron-air batteries to new US AI data centres

  Form Energy has signed a 12GWh supply agreement with Crusoe for iron-air batteries, announced at CERAWeek 2026.

  • Main announcement: The agreement secures 12GWh of iron-air battery capacity for Crusoe with secured volumes, pricing and delivery terms beginning in 2027; Form Energy said the batteries will be manufactured at its Form 1 factory in West Virginia.
  • Background and details: The article references Form Energy’s other 2026 commitments including a 30GWh element in the Google–Xcel Energy multi-technology supply deal (enabling 100-hour dispatch of 300MW) and a planned 10MW / 1,000MWh project with FuturEnergy Ireland expected online in 2029; the Crusoe agreement is significant but prospective until first projects are underway, and questions remain about round-trip efficiency (RTE) of iron-air technology.
• Mar 27, 2026

  Trump Admin’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge: What It Means for Hyperscalers

  Seven major operators—Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI—signed the White House-brokered Ratepayer Protection Pledge on March 4, committing to build, procure, or directly fund new electricity generation capacity and to cover transmission and interconnection upgrade costs rather than passing them on to residential or commercial ratepayers.

  • Main announcement: The seven named hyperscalers signed the Ratepayer Protection Pledge (White House-brokered, March 4) to fund new generation and pay for transmission/interconnection upgrades tied to their U.S. data center demand; the pledge explicitly shifts upgrade costs away from residential/commercial ratepayers and toward data center builders.
  • Context and implementation details: States and regional operators are already acting (e.g., Texas Senate Bill 6, PJM process updates) to assign large-load cost responsibility; companies are negotiating tailored agreements (upfront funding, cost-sharing, long-term commitments), examples include Microsoft’s Community-First framework and Microsoft’s involvement in restarting a Three Mile Island unit, while EPRI projects accelerated electricity demand growth through 2030.
• Mar 26, 2026

  Renewable Energy vs. Fossil Fuels: Who Is Actually Winning in 2026?

  Happy Eco News (author Artemis) publishes an analytical piece stating that the energy transition is accelerating in electricity generation but has not yet displaced fossil fuels across total energy demand.

  • Main announcement: The article reports that renewables are rapidly expanding in electricity — citing solar and wind at 17% of U.S. electricity generation in 2024 (756,621 GWh), global clean energy investment of $2.2 trillion in 2025 out of $3.3 trillion total energy spending, and that renewables represented over 90% of new global electricity capacity added in 2025.
  • Background and additional facts: The piece notes that fossil fuels still supplied 58% of U.S. electricity in 2024 and that 82% of total U.S. energy consumption came from fossil fuels in 2023 (University of Michigan factsheet); it also records that global emissions hit a fourth consecutive annual record in 2024 and highlights mounting electricity-footprint scrutiny on sectors such as data centers, streaming platforms, and crypto casinos.
• Mar 26, 2026

  Aligned Data Centers Closes on $2.58 Credit Facility

  Aligned Data Centers has announced a $2.58 billion revolving credit facility to finance US data center expansion.

  • Main announcement: Aligned secured a $2.58 billion revolving credit facility backed by six later-stage data centers (locations include Dallas, Phoenix, Northern Virginia). The facility matures in three years with the option for two one-year extensions and will be used to finish constructing the sites and finance future development projects; lenders include insurance companies, pension funds and other institutions, with PGIM confirmed as an anchor lender.
  • Background and other details: Aligned already maintains a credit facility with banks and intends to increase the new facility’s borrowing capacity as it adds data centers. The financing comes ahead of a previously agreed $40 billion acquisition of Aligned by a group led by BlackRock Inc.’s Global Infrastructure Partners from Macquarie Asset Management, which is expected to close later this year.
• Mar 26, 2026

  International Data Center Day: Future Frontiers 2030-2070

  Data Center Frontier presents a fictional, forward-looking narrative exploring International Data Center Day activities and future digital infrastructure education.

  • Main announcement/action: Data Center Frontier publishes a plausible-future narrative about International Data Center Day (2030) in which 32 middle-school teams worldwide design, build, and operate tabletop, self-sustaining mini data center campuses using modular racks, fiber, micro solar, tiny wind turbines, programmable robotic operators, and AI agents; judges evaluated efficiency, resilience, innovation, and execution, with winners from India, and recognitions for edge-first and resilience (e.g., a Texas team with a microturbine mockup). Timeline and scale details: event depicted in 2030, final phase runs live AI workloads, and a coda projects to Moon-8 in 2070 — a lunar campus described as 100 gigawatts across eight domes.
  • Background and details: The piece is narrative/speculative (not reportage) and highlights concrete technical constraints: mandatory fiber wiring, power budgeting and dynamic pricing experiments (teams using live grid APIs), predictive maintenance demonstrations, and task-shifting of workloads under thermal and energy limits; it also references organizational context including 7x24 Exchange, Data Center Frontier’s editorial role, and use of AI tools (elements created with help from OpenAI’s GPT5).