The Austin corridor is becoming Texas' data center magnet
A $1.44 billion EdgeConneX campus in Bastrop County is one of several AI compute projects clustering around Austin and San Antonio.
BASTROP COUNTY, Texas — The race to build AI compute is reshaping the land around Austin. A $440 million data center developed by EdgeConneX with Rackspace Technology is rising on a 140-acre site in Bastrop County, the first of four buildings in a planned $1.44 billion campus, with the initial structure due for completion around June 2026.
It is far from alone. A planned Edged facility in Martindale spans nearly 870,000 square feet with a potential build-out above two million, and Prime Data Centers is developing two buildings totaling 760,000 square feet in nearby Maxwell on a $400 million investment. The Austin–San Antonio corridor has now surpassed both Houston and Dallas for AI data center construction.
The boom has pulled in power innovators too: Exowatt is standing up an Austin hub to deploy modular renewable systems that feed energy directly to data centers, aiming to route around grid bottlenecks for high-density AI clusters.
Why it matters
AI's appetite for compute is landing as concrete and copper in Central Texas, bringing investment and construction jobs but also straining electricity and water. Local officials have begun openly debating the trade-offs — a sign the data center wave is now a civic issue, not just an engineering one.
Reported by Next in Austin. Based on reporting from Government Technology.
