When you think of Abilene, artificial intelligence might not be the first thing that comes to mind. But leaders in the city, and in Taylor County, want to make the area as hospitable as they can for a massive 200-megawatt data center, to be located just outside town.
Crusoe, a crypto mining firm that’s turned its attention to AI, will build the new data center within the Lancium clean compute campus, just outside Abilene.
Ronald W. Erdrich is a photojournalist and columnist for the Abilene Reporter-News. He says Lancium will offer facilities for a variety of high-tech companies, including the Crusoe data center.
“I think it’s 800 acres…,” Erdrich said. “It’s huge.”
It’s also evolving, with the ultimate purpose and layout not yet clear.
“You think of it as just sort of like a flower that’s about to open up,” he said. “As it further blossoms, there’s going to be more aspects to it that you couldn’t see from the outside and that weren’t apparent from the beginning.”
Erdrich says Lancium plans to rely on renewable energy sources for much of the power it needs, including power from a large wind farm located near Roscoe, TX.
“And then we have a lot of solar that’s starting to come online as well,” he said.
