SpaceX Plans More Than $74 Billion for AI Supercomputing Campuses in Texas and Arizona

The company expects to spend more than $24 billion at Starbase and about $50 billion in Arizona, according to Reuters. The AI segment generated more than half of SpaceX's revenue in the third quarter, Reuters reported. SpaceX rents computing power to AI developers, and Anthropic is its largest customer, providing about a third of its revenue, while Google has agreed to pay $920 million a month for computing capacity, according to The Next Web.

The plans show how far the rocket and satellite company now depends on building and powering data centres, and how much of that depends on local approvals and on generating its own electricity. SpaceX sold bonds months ago to fund its AI build-out, The Next Web reported.

At Starbase, the facility would produce its own power instead of drawing from the public grid. A city notice showed plans for a gas-fired power plant and supercomputing facility on about 444 acres, and The Next Web reported that SpaceX will build, own and operate the plant. SpaceX said the project has already generated more than 3,000 construction jobs and will support more than 500 permanent jobs once it is running. The Starbase City Commission is due to consider a property tax abatement for the project on December 9.

The Arizona campus is larger and less settled. It needs approval from Cochise County, and SpaceX said it would create about 5,500 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs. The company said it is working with local electric cooperatives and that the project could lower bills for cooperative members by up to 20%. It said the campus would use dry cooling, with no planned industrial use of groundwater. The Next Web reported that SpaceX has also pointed to existing renewable energy but has not said whether the Arizona site will run on gas.

Opposition has formed in Arizona. A petition with 2,400 signatures asks officials to deny the permit, according to Reuters, and hundreds of residents confronted SpaceX at a meeting last week over water, power bills and wildlife, according to a local newspaper cited by The Next Web. In Mississippi, more than 10,000 residents have joined a lawsuit over noise from a gas power plant that supplies Musk's data centres, The Next Web reported.

The Arizona project now goes to a Cochise County public hearing in December, the same month the Starbase commission votes on the Texas tax break.