Project Spero data center, Moore, South Carolina

TigerDC will not build Project Spero, its planned $3 billion data center in the Tyger River Industrial Park in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, after the county council turned against the tax deal the company needed. The New York-based company withdrew on February 27, 2026, two hours before the council voted against offering it a property tax abatement, and said it would pursue other sites.

TigerDC, which has run a bitcoin mining facility in Spartanburg County since 2022, announced the project publicly on January 26, 2026: a high-performance computing data center focused on artificial intelligence, with about 50 full-time jobs. Its first phase was to open in 2027 at 100 megawatts, with some power generated on site from natural gas and a closed-loop cooling system. Lockhart Power said the project would not raise its customers' rates.

The fight was over the tax break. The fee-in-lieu-of-tax agreement would have cut the company's property tax rate from 10.5 percent to 4 percent for 40 years. Council passed first reading in November 2025, and on February 16, 2026, in front of a crowd that spilled into the hallway and frequently shouted and booed, voted 5 to 2 for second reading. "We're going to be the ones paying for it," resident Allison Herb told the council. Councilman Paul Abbott, who voted no, said: "I think that this is a bad business deal." A petition, "Stop Data Centers Coming to Upstate, SC", gathered more than 1,200 signatures and called for a moratorium on data centers in Spartanburg and Cherokee counties until regulations are in place.

In the week after second reading, council chair Manning Lynch and Monier Abusaft, who had both voted yes, said they would vote no, and on February 26 council members held a news conference with state legislators to say they would let the state take the lead on regulating data centers. "We're thrilled with this no vote by our County Council," said Eric Allison, who started the No Data Centers in Spartanburg Facebook page. "Major infrastructure investments require alignment among stakeholders," the company said. "Project Spero recognizes that alignment has not been achieved."

The door is not closed. "We're certainly not shutting the door on data centers," Abusaft said, adding: "Hopefully when another project like this comes, we have clear guidelines from the state." South Carolina lawmakers were debating a bill, S.867, that would change how the state regulates data center development. Spartanburg has other proposals, chief among them a $2.8 billion facility proposed by NorthMark Strategies.