Core Scientific -- CoreWeave -- Denton, TX -- July 14, 2025

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.”

 ************************************
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.