Locator: 10010COREWEAVE.
Link here.
CoreWeave Inc. is expanding a data center that is projected to double
the electricity needs of a city near Dallas, another example of the
strains that artificial intelligence workloads are placing on the US
power supply.
Local officials have grappled with how to handle
the increased stress on the electricity grid from the project, according
to a late 2024 presentation and emails seen by Bloomberg.
The
site is being developed by Core Scientific Inc. and will be used by
OpenAI in Denton, Texas. Last week, CoreWeave announced it would acquire
Core Scientific for about $9 billion, in part, to gain direct control
of its data centers aimed at supplying AI work.
Denton,
about 50 miles northwest of Dallas, has almost doubled its population
in the last 25 years to about 166,000 residents. To meet the spike in
AI-related power demand, the city is passing on any extra costs to the
data center operator and constructing additional grid infrastructure.
Like some other large AI data center projects, the
site in Denton was focused on cryptocurrency mining before pivoting to
AI workloads in December. This transition means unrelenting power
consumption — the site will no longer curtail operations when power
prices are high — which will increase grid strain.
“Now
you’re talking about a facility that has to have energy 24 hours a day,
365 days a year,” Puente said. That challenge will be mitigated by the
addition of backup generators and batteries, he added.
Unlike many large projects, the Denton data center didn’t receive local
tax exemptions. Officials expect more than $600 million in property and
sales tax from the data center expansion, more than double the costs it
plans to incur, according to an analysis document seen by Bloomberg. It
also anticipates that 135 new jobs will be created.
The Denton site, which is already being rented by CoreWeave, is Core
Scientific’s largest planned project at about 390 megawatts of power.
It’s “utilizing the majority of extra system capacity” in the city,
wrote a utility executive in a January email seen by Bloomberg. Any
additional large power users will exacerbate overloads on the grid, the
executive added.
That is significantly larger than a traditional data center, but still
an order of magnitude smaller than some megaprojects such as Oracle
Corp.’s Stargate in Abilene, Texas. “When fully built out, it will host
one of the largest GPU clusters in North America,” Core Scientific Chief
Executive Officer Adam Sullivan said of the site during a May call.
“Denton is a flagship facility.”
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My Thoughts
My reply to the reader who sent me the Coreweave link above.
Thank you, I had not seen that.
In fact the story hits closer to home that I imagined.
The
"city" they are referring to is Denton. Denton is where I took Arianna
every weekend for water polo tournaments during her high school years.
It's about a 40-minute drive, I suppose, just north of us. It's a huge
city.
Claim to fame: the movie "Rocky Horror Picture Show" was set in Denton, TX -- a real cult classic.
Denton
is just north of the I-35 / Texas State Highway 114 interchange where
one of the biggest Buc-ee's is located and where the Texas Motor
Speedway is located.
Today,
2025, the population geographical center in the DFW area is just north
of Dallas (Frisco, McKinney, Plano where Dallas Cowboys have their
headquarters) but in 2050 the Tx DOT says the DFW population center will
move to Rhome, Texas, where the Texas Motor Speedway is located, as
well as another airport, and where GE (or whoever?) makes Burlington
Northen locomotives.
Right
now Texas' Silicon Valley is along I-35 north of Austin, that activity
will gradually move to north Texas around Frisco (north Dalla),
Southlake (US headquarters for Schwab located there near the I-35 /
Texas State Highway 114; and Denton, north of Ft Worth.
Finally:
I-35: Mexico to Austin to DFW north to Oklahoma City to Kansas City and points north.
Texas
State Highway 114 is being expanded and some places now is ten lanes
across. the thoroughfare from Dallas to I-10 to Los Angeles.
That's how I keep the three major thoroughfares straight in my mind when I'm on the road.
121 south to where I live and south to Forth Worth
121 north to Frisco (Dallas Cowboys)
360 east to Dallas
360 west back to where we live and DFW airport
114 east to Dallas
114 west to Los Angeles
So that Denton story is a big, big story for us.
Lots and lots of jobs.
University of North Texas is located in Denton.
University of Texas Dallas is to the east and becoming a huge engineering (computer) center -- in the past six years.
Thank you for the story.