Blue Owl Capital, alongside Crusoe and Primary Digital Infrastructure, is developing a 2-phase, 1.2-GW AI data center campus in Abilene, Texas. The project, part of the Lancium Clean Campus, spans more than 800 acres and is designed to support large-scale AI workloads. It also features advanced liquid cooling and efficient power systems.
Phase 1 covers two buildings and has a capacity of over 200 MW. It is already under lease to a major hyperscale tenant. Phase 2 of Blue Owl Capital’s data center hub in Abilene, Texas extends the site to eight buildings and the total capacity to 1.2 GW. Planned multi-phased commissioning spans through 2030.
Blue Owl Capital’s Data Center Hub in Abilene: Phase 1 Project Factsheet
Location
- Site: Abilene, Texas
- Land Area: 200 acres
- Connectivity: Direct access to long-haul fiber routes
- Design Standard: Tier III
Capacity
- Capacity: 206 MW
- Number of Buildings: 2
- Scalable Grid Interconnections: Up to 300 MW
- Initial Capacity Secured in Phase 1: 100 MW
- Power Supply: Both local wind and solar generation
Timeline
- Phase 1 Groundbreaking: June 2024
- Energized: H1 2025
- Future Expansion: Phased build-outs through late 2020s
Cooling Technology
- Cooling Type: Air-cooled chillers, water-free systems
- Rack Density: High-density (AI/Machine Learning optimized)
- Scalability: Modular deployment
Contractors
- Developer/ Operator: Blue Owl Capital, Crusoe, Primary Digital Infrastructure
- Financing Partner: Newmark with a $2.3 billion package, among other sources
- Phase 1 General Contractor: The Beck Group
Phase 1 Economics
- Cost: $2.3 billion
- Construction Jobs: In the hundreds
- Permanent Jobs: Dozens have been created since 2024
Phase 1 of the Blue Owl-led AI data center hub positioned Abilene as one of the largest hyperscale campuses in Texas outside Dallas. This was also largely made possible through the leveraging of West Texas’ renewable energy assets and cost-efficient land compared to other regions in the U.S.
Texas energy utilities, LandBridge and NRG Energy have also unveiled plans to develop a 1.1 GW natural gas-fired plant to power a future data center in the Delaware Basin in West Texas.
Blue Owl’s Data Center: Phase 2 Project Factsheet
Location
- Site: Expansion on Abilene Clean Campus site
- Land Area: Hundreds of acres for multi-phase scaling
Project Capacity and Scope
- Capacity: 1.1 GW
- Planned Buildout: Multiple additional data halls beyond the initial 2 buildings
- Grid Interconnection: To be reinforced with new substations and transmission upgrades
- Power Supply: Renewables from West Texas
- Sustainability Goal: Lower carbon intensity per MW
Timeline
- Planning and Financing: 2024-2025
- Financing Milestone: Early 2025-J.P. Morgan and partners secured $15 billion in capital commitments
- Construction Start: March 2025
- Project Delivery: 2026-2027
- Full Completion Target: By early 2030s
Cooling Technology
- Cooling Type: Expansion of air-cooled and water-free designs used in phase 1
- Rack Density : 40 kW per rack
- Scalability: Modular deployment
Contractors
- Developer/ Operator: Blue Owl Capital, Crusoe, Primary Digital Infrastructure
- Financing Partner: J.P. Morgan with a $15 billion package
- Construction Firms: To be awarded
Phase 2 Economics
- Capital Expenditure (Capex): $15 billion
- Job Creation: Thousands of construction roles. Several hundred permanent jobs
Also Read Meta Plans $10B New AI Data Center in Richland Parish, Louisiana
Financing for Blue Owl Capital’s Data Center Hub in Abilene, Texas
Financing for data center hub is through multi-billion-dollar commitments. These include loans made by J.P. Morgan, making the development one of the largest AI-focused data center projects currently underway in the United States.
The financing of the Abilene Data Center project has been rolled out in stages aligned with the campus’ phased development. Phase 1 financing, totaled to approximately $2.3 billion, and was arranged by Newmark in late 2024. Newmark’s package covered the construction of the first two hyperscale buildings. These total to about 206 MW in capacity and nearly 1 million square feet of space. The deal also secured a long-term lease with a Fortune 100 hyperscale tenant.
Phase 2 of the project’s financing structure scaled up dramatically. In early 2025, J.P. Morgan led a $15 billion financing arrangement to fund the expansion, which will add over 1.1 GW of new capacity. Additionally, Phase 2’s financing features a blend of institutional equity, construction debt, and long-term credit facilities. This goes on to reflect the capital-intensive nature of hyperscale buildouts such as the second phase of Blue Owl Capital’s data center hub in Abilene, Texas.
In addition to the specifics of financing for the two phases of the project, this investment model – Newmark’s $2.3 billion capital in Phase 1 and J.P. Morgan’s $15 billion package in Phase 2 – illustrates how data center development in emerging hubs like West Texas is evolving.
The Stargate Project and Data Centers in the United States
President Donald Trump’s second tenure in the U.S. top office also announced the Stargate Project soon after his inauguration. The project aims to invest up to US$500 billion over four years to build AI and data centers infrastructure in the U.S. On board the project is OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, Microsoft, NVIDIA, ARM, among other tech industry giants.
Texas’ Abilene campus featured as one of the first implementation sites under the Stargate initiative. In addition to this, Oracle, OpenAI, SoftBank, among others have also identified Blue Owl’s Abilene hub as one of their initial data center locations.
The impressive investments made in Blue Owl-led AI data center hub in Abilene, Texas, and other data centers in the U.S. continue to highlight their strategic importance especially with the rapidly changing tech industry. This is as seen in recent developments such as Nvidia-OpenAI $100 billion partnership, and Oracle’s potential $20 billion multi-year cloud computing deal, among others.
