TAC Data Centers: Project Cardinal, Great Falls, Montana

Ardent TAC Data Centers, an Atlanta company, proposed Project Cardinal in June 2025: a 2 million square foot data center campus on 569 acres next to the AgriTech Park in Great Falls, Cascade County, Montana, seeking 500 to 600 megawatts of power and costing $1 billion to $1.5 billion. It was the largest data center proposed in Montana at the time, but that much power was not readily available in northcentral Montana, and TAC dropped the proposal by the fall of 2025.

The withdrawal did not end the debate. On July 28, 2026, the Golden Triangle Resource Council brought Cascade County commissioners a petition with about 250 signatures asking the county to press state regulators on consumer protections and to adopt its own moratorium on hyperscale data centers until rules exist. "We had a petition that about 250 signed that they want the county commission to take some steps to safeguard ourselves, our pocketbook and our natural resources and put some positive steps in place before the hyperscale lands on us," council member Steve Grout said. Fellow member Gordon Whirry asked commissioners to schedule a public hearing on the request "quite soon."

Commissioners had not set a hearing date or voted on the moratorium request by the time of that meeting, and no county decision on it has been published since. Great Falls Development Alliance president Brett Doney described a different response to the cancelled project: "We formed a data center task force to learn about the potential benefits and potential negative impacts, so if we do have another proposed data center project, we're better informed."