Elon Musk’s aerospace and artificial-intelligence venture has announced a multi-year program worth $74 billion to construct two of the nation’s largest AI supercomputing campuses. The projects, located in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and Cochise County in Arizona, are intended to supply massive compute power for both internal workloads and external customers such as leading AI firms. The scale of the spend places SpaceX among a select group of technology companies that are building hyperscale facilities capable of training next-generation models.
The Texas site will sit on 444 acres of land that SpaceX already owns adjacent to its Starbase launch complex. The plan earmarks $24 billion for a data-center campus that will generate its own electricity, thereby avoiding reliance on the regional grid. This self-supply strategy is designed to keep local power costs stable for residential and commercial users while supporting the high energy intensity of AI training clusters.
Texas campus: layout and on-site power
The Texas campus will be organized around several single-story buildings, each optimized for dense server racks and high-speed interconnects. SpaceX has disclosed that the facility will incorporate a dedicated generation plant, likely leveraging natural-gas turbines or renewable sources, though the exact mix has not been revealed. By producing electricity on-site, the operation aims to keep its megawatt-scale demand isolated from the public utility network.
Water and infrastructure commitments
Alongside the power plan, SpaceX has pledged $220 million for water and wastewater upgrades in the Brownsville area. An initial $40 million has already been transferred to the local public-utilities board, and the agreement calls for an additional 20 million gallons of water per day: 8 million gallons from potable reuse and 12 million from expanded brackish-groundwater treatment. The water facilities will remain under municipal ownership, and SpaceX will pay standard rates without acquiring preferential rights.
Arizona campus: size, power grid ties, and cooling approach
The Cochise County project is projected at roughly $50 billion and will consist of nine buildings, each about 493,000 sq ft. Combined, the complex could draw up to 6 GW of electricity from the regional grid, with an associated 24 GWh of battery storage to smooth peak loads. Unlike the Texas site, the Arizona campus will not host an on-site power plant; instead, it will rely on existing cooperatives, Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative and Arizona Electric Power Cooperative, for supply, while maintaining 10-MW natural-gas standby generators for critical systems.
Dry-cooling and water usage
Cooling will be achieved through sealed liquid loops paired with fan-cooled dry coolers, avoiding traditional evaporative towers. The loops are intended to be filled once and reused for up to a decade, limiting water consumption to an estimated 10 acre-feet per year: roughly the annual usage of 20-30 Arizona homes. This design reflects a broader industry shift toward water-efficient cooling in arid regions.
Financial impact and market relationships
SpaceX’s AI division, branded xAI, now accounts for more than half of the company’s revenue after the historic initial public offering that set a record for IPO size. Major customers include Anthropic, which has signed a contract worth up to $120.5 billion through 2029, and Google, paying $920 million per month for compute capacity. Existing data centers in Memphis, Tennessee, and Southaven, Mississippi, already serve a roster of cloud giants, underscoring the firm’s growing role as a provider of outsourced AI infrastructure.
Capital expenditures surged to $19.6 billion in the third quarter, nearly triple the amount recorded the previous year. To fund chip acquisitions and construction, SpaceX closed $40 billion in debt financing and, according to its chief financial officer, anticipates an additional $35-$40 billion of outlays through the end of the year. The Texas project is projected to generate more than 3,000 construction jobs with about 500 permanent positions once operational, while the Arizona development could support 5,500 construction jobs and 1,000 long-term roles, alongside potential county tax revenues of up to $250 million in the first year.
