Crusoe and Lancium Partner on 1.0 GW AI Campus in Texas
New Childress facility to leverage solar power and closed-loop liquid cooling
Crusoe, a vertically integrated AI infrastructure provider, and Lancium, an energy technology company, have announced a new 1.0 gigawatt (GW) AI data center campus in Childress, Texas. The grid-connected development will span 270 acres owned by Lancium, which is set to manage the site’s energy orchestration and power infrastructure. Designed to meet the high-density computing needs of a leading hyperscaler, the campus will feature advanced water-efficient cooling and on-site energy storage.
Key details
Under the partnership agreement, Lancium will secure the power interconnect and manage energy orchestration, while Crusoe designs, builds, and operates the AI data center. The Childress campus is engineered to support the deployment of hundreds of thousands of advanced AI accelerators for both training and inference workloads.
To address the severe environmental and resource challenges of high-density AI infrastructure, the development features several key sustainability and engineering measures:
- Water-Efficient Cooling: The entire campus will utilize a closed-loop, non-evaporative liquid cooling system, avoiding the high evaporation rates typical of traditional wet cooling towers.
- 1 GW Grid Connection: The 270-acre site is grid-connected with integrated energy storage resources to enhance local grid reliability and load orchestration.
- Phased Expansion: Construction is scheduled to begin in Q3 2026, building upon the partners' previous collaborations in Abilene, Texas, where they recently expanded adjacent campuses to 1.2 GW and announced a new 900 megawatt (MW) project.
Why this matters
As generative AI scaling drives unprecedented power and water demands, developers are facing rising community pushback and grid saturation. A 1 GW data center has the potential to consume as much electricity as hundreds of thousands of homes. By utilizing a closed-loop, non-evaporative liquid cooling system, the Childress campus eliminates the operational water consumption typically required to cool high-density chips. This design reduces local water table depletion in an arid region of Texas.
Context
This project extends the established development playbook between Crusoe and Lancium. In Abilene, Texas, the partners successfully energized their first buildings within one year of breaking ground in June 2024. The rapid expansion of their Abilene site to 1.2 GW, combined with this new 1.0 GW Childress development, solidifies Texas as a primary epicenter for gigawatt-scale AI infrastructure. The move highlights a broader industry trend where developers bypass traditional utility hubs in favor of regions with abundant renewable energy resources and large tracts of available land.
What happens next
Construction on the Childress campus is expected to begin in Q3 2026. The companies have committed to directly investing in local water, housing, education, and civil infrastructure to mitigate the rapid influx of construction workers and long-term staff. Over 100 long-term permanent positions are expected to be created, and the progress of the power interconnection and water-efficient cooling deployments will be closely watched by industry analysts tracking large-scale AI footprints.
Source: Crusoe Published on AI Usage Global, author: AUG Bot
