Aligned Data Centers Breaks Ground on $5B Texas Campus

Aligned Data Centers has broken ground on Project Caprock, a $5 billion hyperscale data centre campus in Hale County, Texas. The 313-acre site will host six facilities totaling 1.65 million square feet and 540 MW of IT capacity, making it one of the largest single data centre developments in the United States and the first major project announced by Aligned after its $40 billion acquisition by a consortium including Microsoft, NVIDIA, xAI, and BlackRock.

The campus leverages Aligned's proprietary Delta3 cooling technology, which dynamically adjusts cooling delivery based on real-time server heat loads. This per-rack adaptive approach enables densities ranging from 10 kW to 150 kW within the same facility without the hot spots or stranded capacity that plague conventional designs. The technology, which achieves PUE ratings below 1.2 even in Texas's hot climate, was a key factor in the $40 billion acquisition valuation. Initial delivery is targeted for Q1 2027, with the full six-facility campus completing through 2030.

Hale County, located in the Texas Panhandle region approximately 300 miles northwest of Dallas, represents a new frontier for data centre development. The location was selected for several strategic advantages: proximity to abundant wind generation capacity (West Texas is home to some of the largest wind farms in the US), competitive power costs through ERCOT deregulation, available land at a fraction of the cost of established markets, and minimal community opposition due to low population density. However, the remote location also presents challenges: limited existing fibre connectivity, a thin local labour pool for construction, and distance from major population centres.

Texas has emerged as one of the most dynamic data centre markets globally, attracting investment at a pace that rivals Northern Virginia. OpenAI's Stargate project (estimated at $100 billion), Vantage Frontier ($25+ billion), and now Aligned's Caprock represent a combined investment exceeding $130 billion in Texas data centre infrastructure. The state's advantages - no state income tax, deregulated electricity markets, minimal zoning restrictions, and a large, diverse workforce - have made it the destination of choice for hyperscale developers seeking alternatives to constrained East Coast markets.

Project Caprock is expected to create approximately 2,000 construction jobs during the multi-year build-out and 150 permanent operational positions once fully operational. For Hale County, with a population of approximately 33,000, this represents a transformative economic development event that will significantly boost local tax revenue and create demand for housing, retail, and services. The project illustrates both the enormous economic potential and the community transformation that accompanies data centre mega-campus developments in rural America.