SpaceX is preparing a massive expansion of its artificial-intelligence ambitions in Starbase, Texas: a gas-fired power plant paired with a supercomputing facility that could cost roughly $24 billion in its initial phases. The proposed project, which SpaceX would build, own, and operate, is outlined in a public hearing notice covering the planned facility.
The Starbase City Commission is scheduled to consider a property-tax abatement and related economic-development agreement at a December 9 public meeting. The notice describes the $24 billion figure as an estimate for the project’s opening stages, leaving room for later additions that could make the site substantially larger. The proposed facility would sit on a 444-acre tract within Starbase, the company-dominated community on the South Texas coast that also serves as the center of SpaceX’s Starship operations.
That setting could give SpaceX an unusually friendly local regulatory environment. Starbase was incorporated around land largely controlled by the rocket company, and two of the three commissioners expected to weigh the tax arrangement are SpaceX employees. The arrangement has already prompted questions about whether residents will have a meaningful role in decisions affecting pollution, water, electricity, and public finances. The commission’s December meeting is expected to give the public its clearest early opportunity to comment.
The project also arrives as SpaceX builds out a separate AI-computing operation near Memphis, Tennessee, where its Colossus facilities rely on large numbers of gas turbines for electricity. Those sites have faced opposition from nearby residents, including legal action focused on emissions from the turbines. A gas-powered installation in Starbase could therefore intensify the debate over whether rapidly expanding AI infrastructure is shifting environmental and energy costs onto surrounding communities.
SpaceX may face a higher-level obstacle in Texas. Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa campaigned on pausing new data-center development until state lawmakers establish stronger protections involving electricity prices, water use, tax incentives, and community participation. Her proposed restrictions are aimed at new permit applications, which could make the timing and legal status of SpaceX’s Starbase plans especially important.
The facility would fit Elon Musk’s broader push to secure enormous amounts of computing capacity for SpaceX’s AI efforts. Alongside its terrestrial data centers, the company has explored putting computing hardware in orbit, including proposed satellite-based systems intended to use SpaceX’s launch infrastructure. For now, however, the immediate test is much more terrestrial: whether Starbase officials approve the incentives, whether environmental permits follow, and how Texas responds to a project whose price tag rivals the largest single-site data-center investments in the world.
