Lancium Clean Campus data center, Abilene, Texas

The Lancium Clean Campus outside Abilene, in Taylor County, Texas, is the flagship site of OpenAI's Stargate project, where Crusoe is building the data center buildings on Lancium's land for Oracle and OpenAI. The first eight buildings are planned at about 4 million square feet and 1.2GW, and Crusoe said in March 2026 that a separate 900 MW campus for Microsoft next door would bring the whole Abilene site to about 2.1 GW.

Construction began in 2024, and in September 2025 Crusoe said the first two buildings, 980,000 square feet supporting more than 200MW of IT, were running for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure on behalf of OpenAI. Crusoe topped out the eighth and final building in November 2025, thanking "the 7,000 electricians, construction pros, and skilled tradespeople who come to Abilene every day." Crusoe said in March 2026 that the second phase of six buildings was expected to be complete by the end of 2026.

Oracle and OpenAI had been expected to take the whole campus but decided in early 2026 to stop at 1.2GW, saying: "We considered expanding it further, but ultimately chose to put that additional capacity in other locations." Microsoft then signed for 900MW in two new buildings with an on-site power plant, on land adjacent to the existing campus, where land works were already underway and the first building is expected to be energized in mid-2027. Crusoe says that plant will provide 900MW of behind-the-meter power, paired with a battery storage system, and that the new buildings will use closed-loop, non-evaporative liquid cooling. The original campus is also getting its own gas power: Parker Hannifin said in October 2025 it would supply equipment for 29 GE Vernova gas turbines with a combined capacity of 1.015GW at the site.

The campus carries large local tax breaks. At a February 2025 special meeting on a second abatement for Lancium, City Manager Robert Hanna explained the terms: "On the tax abatement side, it's 15% of their tax liability. So, we're abating 85%, and we get 15%." Hanna argued that without it, "there's no way they could build the property." Taylor County commissioners granted a 20-year property tax abatement of their own. Crusoe says the first eight buildings are expected to deliver up to 32% of the City of Abilene's and up to 25% of Taylor County's budgeted property tax revenue for fiscal 2025.

Residents raised power and water from the start. At the city's February 2025 meeting, Abilene resident Samuel Garcia recalled the 2021 freeze, in which six people in Taylor County died, and asked: "What happens with the usage of electricity and water by this facility if we were to have one of these?" Hanna answered that the cooling is a closed-loop system and that the city was looking at industrial pretreatment for the water the site discharges. At the county's meeting the same week, resident Dr. Mark Teague worried about unreliable, more expensive power for consumers and about heavy metals reaching the groundwater.

Two years into construction, the complaints are about housing and the cost of living. KUT reported in August 2026 that average rent in Abilene was almost $2,600 a month according to Zillow, up nearly 50% in a year, and that Abilene Christian University said more than 100 incoming students had nowhere to live for the fall. Lexi Smith, whose family lives across the street from the construction, told KUT it had brought traffic, damaged roads and worse air and water quality. A shelter case manager, Michael Prado, said he now sees families priced out or evicted and that finding someone housing can take up to six months, where it used to take just over one. When the Abilene Chamber of Commerce held a panel on the region's data centers on September 2, 2026, demonstrators came with signs calling for more transparency, and resident Molly Cedillo carried one reading "No More Backroom Data Center Deals."

Some residents want a pause, but Taylor County Judge Phil Crowley said in June 2026 that the county cannot impose one: "The county would have to have permission from the state to be able to pass a local moratorium on data centers." He pointed to Hill County, which reversed its moratorium after a developer sued, and to the water restrictions negotiated for the Stargate project. "If the state put in a moratorium, I would look at possibly supporting that, if that's what the citizens are interested in," Crowley said.

More is coming to the area: in July 2026 a new firm, PowerPlay AI, announced a 400MW natural gas-powered data center near Abilene in a joint venture with the Australian company Sharon AI, targeting power delivery by 2028.

Locally, the decisions that shape the campus sit with the Abilene City Council, which grants the city's abatements, and the Taylor County Commissioners Court, which grants the county's. Crowley has said a moratorium would have to come from the state, so residents who want one have been told to press the Legislature. In September 2026, a Chamber panel heard from protesters and Crowley defended abatements as the county's only lever: "But if people want counties that have control over data centers, you have to have an abatement because that is the only way you're going to have any authority otherwise."