SpaceX to Invest Over $74 Billion in Two Supercomputing Campuses in Texas and Arizona
SpaceX announced on November 12 that it plans to invest more than $74 billion to build two supercomputing campuses, one at Starbase in Cameron County, Texas, and one in Cochise County, Arizona, to train the company's super intelligence (SI) models. The computing capacity will support medical research, emergency response, advanced manufacturing and national security.
At Starbase in Texas's Rio Grande Valley, SpaceX plans to invest more than $24 billion in new supercomputing infrastructure, including an on-site gas-fired power plant; the campus will generate its own electricity rather than draw power from the public grid. The roughly 444-acre site near the Port of Brownsville was transferred from the city of Brownsville to the City of Starbase. SpaceX says the project has already generated more than 3,000 construction jobs and is expected to support more than 500 permanent jobs. The company has also committed $220 million to water and wastewater infrastructure in Brownsville and Cameron County, with $40 million already directed to the Brownsville Public Utilities Board. The Starbase City Commission is scheduled to consider a property tax abatement and economic development agreement for the project on December 9.
In Arizona, SpaceX plans to invest about $50 billion in Cochise County. The roughly 747-acre campus sits along US Highway 191 near Willcox Playa, about 80 miles east of Tucson, next to the Apache Generating Station. Plans call for nine single-story supercompute buildings of about 493,000 square feet each, delivering up to six gigawatts of power at full build-out in four phases of about 1.5 gigawatts each. SpaceX estimates the project will support about 5,500 construction jobs and about 1,000 permanent jobs.
The Arizona campus will connect to the grid through the Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative (SSVEC) and the Arizona Electric Power Cooperative (AEPCO). SpaceX will fund about $3.6 billion in grid upgrades and transfer them to AEPCO at no cost, and says SSVEC residential members' bills could fall by 10 to 40 percent. The campus will also include a 24 gigawatt-hour battery energy storage system, which SpaceX describes as the largest in the United States. The campus will be dry-cooled with no evaporative spray, will use no water for industrial purposes and will drill no new wells; total water use at full build-out is capped at about 10 acre-feet a year, roughly what 20 to 30 Arizona homes use.
Both projects still need local approvals. In Arizona, SpaceX affiliate Tombstone Resources filed a special-use permit application with Cochise County on October 30; the county Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing on December 9 in Bisbee, and construction could start as early as March 2027 if the project is approved. The Texas tax agreement goes before the Starbase City Commission the same day.
In its announcement, SpaceX said: "From the Rio Grande Valley, TX to Cochise County, AZ, we're building more than supercomputers. We're creating jobs, investing in critical infrastructure, expanding local tax bases, and working alongside communities to build a future that benefits the people who live there."
Source: SpaceX
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：SpaceX 发布的亚利桑那州 Cochise County 超级计算园区效果图（SpaceX 官网项目页）。 / Image: Rendering of SpaceX's planned supercomputing campus in Cochise County, Arizona (SpaceX project page).
