Crusoe Plans New 900 MW AI Factory Campus in Abilene

Crusoe said it is developing a new, dedicated Artificial Intelligence (AI) factory campus in Abilene, Texas, next to its existing Abilene site. The company tied the expansion to Microsoft workloads and projected total capacity for the full Abilene footprint at about 2.1 GW, with the new campus adding a 900 Megawatt (MW) component. Land clearing and site preparation were reported as underway.

Crusoe described the plan as a large-scale buildout of additional compute and power capacity in Abilene. The company said the new campus includes two new buildings and an onsite power plant, and it outlined additional activity at the existing Abilene campus, where the first phase involved two 100 MW buildings. A second phase was reported as bringing total campus capacity to 1.2 GW, with completion expected by the end of 2026.

Functionally, the new campus was described as including a 900 MW on-site power plant with an MV Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) intended to support operational reliability and grid resilience. The two new buildings were described as delivering 336 MW of critical IT load each, and the campus was described as using Crusoe’s closed-loop non-evaporative liquid cooling systems.

Crusoe said the new campus would reach first energized status in mid-2027, after land clearing and site preparation. The company also stated that the new project is expected to add thousands of additional construction jobs and hundreds of permanent jobs in the Abilene region. “West Texas has become the Silicon Prairie for AI and the backbone for America’s most consequential innovation,” said Jodey Arrington, Chairman of the House Budget Committee and U.S. Representative from the 19th Congressional District of Texas. “Microsoft is focused on ensuring access to reliable and responsible infrastructure at scale,” said Noelle Walsh, President, Cloud Operations & Innovation at Microsoft. “Crusoe is building a new AI factory campus in Abilene, purpose-built for the demands of next-generation AI,” said Chase Lochmiller, Co-founder and CEO of Crusoe. The company also projected that earlier Abilene campus buildings would deliver up to 32% of the City of Abilene’s and up to 25% of Taylor County’s current FY 2025 budgeted property tax revenue.