Key points
- SpaceX plans more than $74 billion for two AI computing campuses
- SpaceX's Texas and Arizona sites both face local hearings on Dec. 9
- SpaceX's $74 billion compares with $48.1 billion it spent in the first nine months
SpaceX (SPCX) plans to invest more than $74 billion in two supercomputing campuses, one at its Starbase site in Texas and one in Cochise County, Arizona, the company said in a statement on Nov. 12, Reuters reported. SpaceX expects to spend more than $24 billion at Starbase and roughly $50 billion in Arizona.
SpaceX shares were at $143.42 at 12:48 p.m. ET, up 2.6% from Wednesday's close of $139.75.
Both sites face local hearings on Dec. 9
The Starbase City Commission will consider a property tax abatement and a related economic development agreement for the Texas project at its Dec. 9 meeting, according to the city's hearing notice. The Texas site covers about 444 acres east of Brownsville and includes a gas-fired power plant. The Texas campus would generate its own electricity rather than draw from the public grid, according to the Nov. 12 report on SpaceX's statement.
The same day, Cochise County's Planning and Zoning Commission holds a public hearing on the Arizona campus, which we list on our data center moratorium tracker. The application comes from Tombstone Resources LLC, a SpaceX affiliate, and covers nine buildings on about 747 acres near the Apache Generating Station. A petition with 2,400 signatures asks county officials to deny the permit, according to the Nov. 12 report. The Arizona campus still needs the county's approval.
The Arizona campus would use up to 6 gigawatts
The Arizona site would use 6,000 megawatts of power at full buildout, KJZZ reported. SpaceX reported 1.7 gigawatts of nameplate compute at the end of September. That measure counts the power rating of installed GPUs and excludes cooling and other overhead, so it isn't directly comparable with the Arizona campus's total power use.
SpaceX said the campus would create about 5,500 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs. It would use dry cooling, with no planned industrial groundwater use, according to the statement.
SpaceX also said the project could cut bills for members of local electric cooperatives by up to 20%. Tombstone gave county planners a wider range earlier this month: it said the campus would bring 10% to 40% lower energy bills for other co-op members and $34 million to $103 million a year in added county tax revenue, the station reported on Nov. 3.
$74 billion is about 1.5 times SpaceX's spending so far this year
SpaceX reported $48.1 billion of capital expenditures for the first nine months of 2026, and about $40.0 billion of that was in its Super Intelligence segment, as we noted in our Nov. 9 report. The $74 billion plan is about 1.5 times that nine-month total. The reported statement gives no spending schedule, and the Starbase notice says the project may be built in multiple phases. SpaceX's AI segment accounted for more than half of the company's revenue in the third quarter, according to Reuters.
Texas could tighten its rules before the Starbase campus is built. Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa takes office on Jan. 19 and has said she would ban data center approvals until the Legislature passes new protections. Gov. Greg Abbott has already paused new state permits for data centers while regulators study their power and water use.
We're tracking both hearings on our data center moratorium tracker.
