SpaceX plans to invest $24 billion in an AI supercomputing facility in Starbase, Cameron County, Texas, equipped with its own natural-gas power plant. According to Sina Finance, the investment is about 17 times the value of SpaceX’s bitcoin holdings; Bitcointreasuries.net listed 18,712 BTC worth about $1.39 billion at publication time.
The project is expected to include a 748-megawatt power plant with 35 turbines. A Starbase municipal announcement said SpaceX plans to build, own and operate both the plant and the supercomputing facility. Anthropic recently agreed to spend $3.4 billion on natural-gas generators with a combined capacity of 1.7 gigawatts.
SpaceX also submitted an application for property-tax incentives, and the Starbase city commission plans to hold a public hearing on December 9. The proposed relief would reduce the company’s property-tax burden and allow it to use incentives under the Cameron County Enterprise Zone.
Texas regulatory and political developments could affect the project. Gina Hinojosa defeated Republican incumbent Greg Abbott in the November 3 gubernatorial election; she campaigned against AI data centers. Abbott ordered a pause in related approvals on August 3, barring new data center projects from advancing through the grid-interconnection process while regulators conduct a review. The review also covers on-site power facilities and their effects on local water resources and communities. Whether SpaceX’s own power plant can bypass the regulatory hurdle remains unclear.