SpaceX plans $74bn supercomputing campuses in Texas and Arizona

Starbase, Texas - SpaceX has set out over $74 billion of planned spending on a pair of AI supercomputing sites, at its Starbase base in South Texas and in Cochise County, Arizona, it announced on 12 November.

Its statement puts the Texas facility at more than $24 billion and the Arizona campus at roughly $50 billion. The two projects widen the company's AI computing business, which it runs alongside its rocket and satellite operations.

The Elon Musk-led company went public in June. In the third quarter, more than half of its revenue came from the AI segment rather than from rockets or Starlink satellite internet.

In Texas, the compute site is on property the company owns beside Brownsville's municipal landfill and close to the city's port. A City of Starbase public hearing notice describes it as a gas-fired power plant and super-compute facility on an approximately 444-acre tract between Boca Chica Boulevard and the port, with estimated capital investment of approximately $24 billion for its initial phases.

SpaceX said the site will produce its own electricity and take nothing from the public grid. Building work there has generated more than 3,000 construction jobs so far, and the finished facility will support more than 500 permanent jobs, according to the company.

On 9 December, Starbase's City Commission will weigh a property tax abatement agreement for the scheme and an economic development agreement that goes with it.

Under a water infrastructure agreement, the City of Brownsville disannexed the 444 acres, placing them within the City of Starbase, SpaceX said. The company has pledged $220 million towards larger water and wastewater systems for Brownsville, adding 20 million gallons a day of capacity, of which $40 million has gone to the Brownsville Public Utilities Board so far.

SpaceX expects the Arizona scheme to create about 5,500 construction jobs, with 1,000 permanent roles once it opens. Its project page lists nine single-storey supercompute buildings of about 493,000 sq ft each, planned to deliver up to six gigawatts of power, together with up to 24 gigawatt-hours of battery energy storage.

Working alongside the area's electric cooperatives, the company said, the campus could bring members' bills down by as much as 20%. Power would come through the grid of the Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative (SSVEC) and the Arizona Electric Power Cooperative (AEPCO), with no on-site power plant, and the company said it would transfer $3.6 billion in grid upgrades to AEPCO at no cost to members.

Cooling would be by dry systems, and the company said it does not plan to draw groundwater for industrial use.

County approval is still outstanding, and the plan faces opposition: a petition with 2,400 signatures urges officials to turn down the permit.

On the county's data centre planning page, the application, SU26-22, is listed under Tombstone Resources L.L.C. It covers a supercomputer and AI data centre campus with battery storage with up to nine computing buildings delivered in four phases. The site covers approximately 747 acres beside U.S. Highway 191 near Cochise and is zoned RU-4 (Rural).

The Cochise County Planning and Zoning Commission, which decides the application, is scheduled to hold its public hearing on it on 9 December.