On March 27, 2026, Crusoe Energy announced the development of a new, dedicated AI factory campus in Abilene, Texas — a 900 megawatt facility purpose-built to support large-scale AI workloads for Microsoft. The campus includes two new buildings and an on-site power plant, and it sits adjacent to Crusoe's existing 1.2 gigawatt Abilene AI factory infrastructure. Combined, the full Abilene site is projected to reach approximately 2.1 gigawatts of total capacity — a single-site concentration of computing power that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
As Crusoe's co-founder and CEO Chase Lochmiller put it: "By integrating 900 megawatts of new on-site power generation, we're laying the industrial foundation for American AI — at a velocity the industry has never seen."
The Build: What's Actually Going Up
The new 900 MW campus is engineered for the evolving requirements of next-generation AI silicon. The key specs:
Each of the two new buildings is designed to deliver 336 megawatts of critical IT load — a density that reflects the rack densities required by next-generation GPU architectures. The campus integrates a 900 MW behind-the-meter on-site power plant paired with a medium-voltage battery energy storage system (MV BESS), designed to enhance operational reliability and grid resilience. The cooling systems use Crusoe's closed-loop, non-evaporative liquid cooling — a design choice that reduces water consumption relative to traditional evaporative cooling.
This is Crusoe's third phase in Abilene. Phase 1 — two 100 MW buildings — was constructed and energized in under one year, which Crusoe describes as setting "a new standard for large-scale AI infrastructure delivery." Phase 2 added six additional buildings to bring the total campus capacity to 1.2 GW; that phase is expected to reach completion by the end of 2026. The new 900 MW campus for Microsoft is Phase 3, with land clearing and site preparation underway and first building energization expected in mid-2027.
Crusoe Abilene Timeline
Why Microsoft Went to Abilene
Microsoft's interest in the Abilene campus reflects a broader shift in how hyperscale operators are thinking about data center siting. Microsoft President of Cloud Operations & Innovation Noelle Walsh said in the March announcement: "As customer demand for AI continues to grow, Microsoft is focused on ensuring access to reliable and responsible infrastructure at scale. Crusoe's Abilene facility reflects the type of large-scale infrastructure that supports next generation AI while contributing long term value to the local community."
The company had already agreed to lease approximately 700 MW of capacity from Crusoe at the same Abilene campus in an earlier deal — a facility that had initially been leased by Oracle for OpenAI, as part of the Stargate project. Microsoft, which is not a Stargate equity partner, effectively stepped into capacity that had been developed for a different hyperscale customer — a dynamic that illustrates the fluidity and competition around the best AI infrastructure sites.
For Microsoft, the Abilene site offers several structural advantages: abundant land at scale, competitive construction costs (DFW and Austin tied for second-lowest cost per megawatt among 19 U.S. markets at $9.4M–$12.1M), a skilled construction workforce already mobilized in the region, an independent grid that can accommodate massive new load, and — critically for AI workloads — the ability to deploy 336 MW per building with the power density that next-generation GPU clusters demand.
The Politics and the Pitch
U.S. Representative Jodey Arrington, Chairman of the House Budget Committee and the Republican representing Texas's 19th Congressional District (which includes Abilene), framed the project in terms that go beyond economics: "West Texas has become the Silicon Prairie for AI and the backbone for America's most consequential innovation. This major expansion of the campus in Abilene by Crusoe and Microsoft is a testament to the hardworking people and pioneering spirit of the Big Country, ensuring America — not China — will lead the next frontier of information technology."
The Abilene mayor, speaking at the March announcement, said the project "will further strengthen our local economy — supporting our restaurants, our home builders while creating high-paying jobs for Abilene citizens."
The jobs claim deserves a nuanced read. During construction, the impact is enormous — 1,500 workers at peak for the Stargate project on an adjacent site, and similar numbers across Crusoe's buildout. Once operational, the facility will employ far fewer people. Data centers are automated facilities; the high-paying jobs are real, but they are not plentiful in the way that manufacturing plant jobs would be. The economic development value is concentrated in construction-phase wages, tax revenue, and the ecosystem of local suppliers and services that grow around a major industrial presence.
Crusoe's Broader Texas Footprint
The Abilene campus is one piece of a much larger Crusoe Texas strategy. In July 2026, Crusoe and Lancium announced a 1.0 gigawatt, 270-acre grid-connected AI campus in Childress County, Texas, with construction planned to start in Q3 2026, thousands of construction jobs, more than 100 permanent jobs, and behind-the-meter solar and storage. The company has also pursued other energy partnerships, including a July 2026 strategic partnership with Aalo Atomics aimed at deploying the first nuclear-powered AI factory, and a July 21 agreement with ON.energy to deploy 5 GW of AI UPS (uninterruptible power supply) technology at multiple hyperscale campuses.
By June 2026, Crusoe stated that its contracted AI infrastructure capacity approached 5 gigawatts across data centers and cloud — positioning the company as one of the world's leading AI factory developers.
How the Grid Freeze Affects Abilene
Governor Abbott's August 3 grid connection freeze creates a differentiated impact across Texas data center projects. Projects that rely entirely on ERCOT grid connection are paused. Projects that generate their own power on-site — or that have already secured grid connection rights — are less affected.
Crusoe's Abilene campus, with its integrated 900 MW on-site power plant, falls into the latter category. The campus is designed from the ground up with behind-the-meter generation, which means it is not dependent on the ERCOT interconnection process in the same way that grid-dependent projects are. That doesn't mean Crusoe is unaffected — the company publicly supported Abbott's audit directive on August 8 — but the operational impact of the pause is meaningfully smaller for behind-the-meter projects than for those waiting in the ERCOT queue.
This dynamic — on-site generation as a hedge against grid interconnection risk — is likely to become a more prominent feature of data center site selection as the regulatory environment in Texas and other states evolves. Crusoe's Abilene model is a live demonstration of that thesis.