SpaceX plans to invest more than $74 billion in two giant artificial intelligence supercomputing campuses, in one of the largest private investments in AI infrastructure announced so far.
The company said on Thursday, 12 November, that it will spend more than $24 billion at its Starbase site in Texas and roughly $50 billion in Cochise County, Arizona. Together, the two campuses would give SpaceX huge computing power for its artificial intelligence work.
The move shows how far SpaceX has moved beyond rockets. Its AI segment generated more than half of its revenue in the third quarter, and the company now needs vast amounts of computing capacity to keep growing that business.
01. The Arizona campus
The Arizona campus would be the larger of the two. At full build-out it could draw up to 6 gigawatts of electricity, built in four phases across nine buildings. That is an enormous amount of power, roughly enough to supply millions of homes.
The project would also be a major source of jobs for the area. SpaceX says it would create about 5,500 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs once the campus is running.
The Starbase site in Texas would be smaller in cost but still large. It would generate its own electricity from a gas-fired power plant on about 444 acres of land, giving the campus a dedicated power supply.
02. Local decisions still to come
Neither project is a done deal yet. Both sites still need local decisions on 9 December, and both face questions from people who live nearby.
In Arizona, the Cochise County zoning hearing will decide whether the project can go ahead. A petition with 2,400 signatures asks officials to deny the permit, with residents raising concerns about the scale of the campus and its demand for power and water.
In Texas, the Starbase City Commission will vote on a property tax abatement for the project, a deal that would cut the tax SpaceX pays on the site.
If both decisions go SpaceX’s way, construction could begin on two of the biggest AI campuses in the country. If not, the company may have to rethink its plans — or find other places to build the computing power it says it needs.
