Galaxy Digital's second Texas data center starts 20 times smaller than its first

Galaxy Digital bought 500 acres of land in McGregor, Texas, for a new AI and high-performance-computing data center campus called Project Merlin. The investment is valued at over $400 million, but the first phase of capacity is just 74 MW. For comparison, the company's existing Helios campus in West Texas is already approved for 1.6+ GW, Investing.com reports — meaning Merlin is starting out roughly 20 times smaller.

• Power for the first 74 MW phase is planned to come online in 2028
• By 2030, once grid infrastructure is in place, the campus could grow to "multi-hundred-megawatt" scale
• The project brings the city of McGregor $7.5 million from the land sale and at least $130 million added to the local tax base
• Construction is expected to create several hundred contractor jobs, with over 30 full-time positions once operational

“McGregor is the next step in our strategy to build a disciplined, multi-campus data center business.”

— Mike Novogratz, Founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital

Quote source: Investing.com.

We've covered Novogratz's own read on bitcoin just last week — $60K will hold, $80K is the ceiling; now his company is making another bet, this time on AI infrastructure, running alongside its core crypto business. The Helios campus in West Texas, approved back in 2022, has already grown to over 1.6 GW of capacity, CoinDesk notes; Merlin, by contrast, was designed as an AI project from the start rather than a byproduct of mining infrastructure.

Galaxy Digital's stock (GLXY) dropped roughly 9% at the moment of the announcement — a reminder that even a well-structured expansion story doesn't guarantee an immediate favorable market reaction. The real test for Merlin isn't the land purchase, it's whether customers show up for capacity that doesn't exist until 2028.

*None of this should be read as personalized investment advice.*