Data center and AI cloud firm Crusoe is to develop a gigawatt-scale data center campus in Texas.

Crusoe and Lancium this week announced plans for a 1GW AI data center campus in Childress, Childress County, Texas.

The grid-connected campus spans 270 acres owned by Lancium, which will also develop and manage the site's energy infrastructure. Construction is expected to begin in Q3 2026.

The site will include behind-the-meter solar and energy storage resources. The data centers will use a closed-loop cooling system to reduce water use.

Previous reports suggest Meta is set to lease capacity in Childress from Crusoe.

Launched in 2017 as a cryptomining firm, Lancium aimed to colocate data centers at renewable sites, such as wind farms, and use excess capacity to power crypto and HPC hardware. The company later moved into developing large sites it calls Clean Campuses, leaving others to develop data centers on its land.

Childress marks the second site where Crusoe and Lancium have partnered. The pair previously joined forces to develop a large-scale campus in Abilene, Texas, for OpenAI via Oracle. Ground broke on the site in 2024, and the first buildings launched last year. Microsoft is also set to lease some capacity at the multi-gigawatt campus.

“This campus represents a major milestone in Crusoe's deep commitment to the state of Texas,” said Chase Lochmiller, co-founder and CEO of Crusoe. “Working with Lancium again, in the same partnership model we built together in Abilene, made Childress an easy choice for our next site. This is more than a data center to us - it's our long-term commitment to this community, and we're proud to be building that future here in Childress.”

This week also saw Lancium announce that QTS will develop an 11-building campus at its third site near Turkey in Hall County, Texas.

“Childress is a natural next step in our partnership with Crusoe,” said Michael McNamara, CEO of Lancium. “Crusoe has been a great partner to build alongside in Abilene, and we're glad to bring that same model - and the jobs and investment that come with it - to the community of Childress. We are deeply committed to working with local stakeholders to advance a model of development that addresses the broader needs of the community we will share for a very long time.”

Crusoe, launched in 2018 as a cryptomining business, has pivoted to development of data centers offering AI cloud services. The company divested its crypto operations in March 2025.

Crusoe also has plans for a 1.8GW campus in Wyoming, two sites in Missouri, and natural gas-powered data centers in Alberta, Canada. It recently backed off from a project in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was recently named as a potential partner for a project in Nebraska.

In February 2026, Crusoe announced it would be deploying modular data centers at Energy Vault's technology center in Snyder, Texas. The initial deployment is expected to scale up to 25MW.

Crusoe launched a GPU cloud service from colocation facilities in 2023. The company operates five cloud regions across the US (Houston, Virginia, Nevada) and Europe (Iceland, Norway). It has partnered with Digital Realty and Equinix in the US and atNorth in Iceland, Polar in Norway, and in Israel with Anan Group and Mega Or.

Recently, Crusoe said it has contracted 4.9GW of AI infrastructure spanning its data center projects and capacity for Crusoe Cloud, and its total development pipeline exceeds 40 GW (including contracted projects, sites under active tenant negotiation in advanced development).

Rival crypto firm-turned-neocloud Iren also has a campus in Childress that is being leased to Microsoft.