SpaceX plans a $24 billion supercomputer and gas plant at Starbase, Texas

SpaceX wants to build a data center and a natural gas power plant at Starbase, its company town in Cameron County, Texas. A city notice puts the project at $24 billion and calls the data center a “super-compute facility,” RGV Business Journal reported on Sunday. The SpaceX supercomputer would go up in phases.

SpaceX is asking the City of Starbase for a property tax abatement that would also let it use the Cameron County Enterprise Zone. City commissioners will hold a public hearing on 9 December at 7 p.m. at city hall. Some of those commissioners also work for SpaceX, the Journal noted.

35 gas turbines and 748 MW

Trinity Consultants filed an application with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on SpaceX’s behalf for a new source of air pollution. It describes the plant this way:

• 35 natural gas turbines;
• 748 MW of generating capacity;
• a site at Starbase, inside the Cameron County Enterprise Zone.

Most AI data centers plug into the grid, CoinDesk pointed out. CoinDesk compared the plan with Anthropic’s agreement to buy 1.7 GW of gas-fired generators for $3.4 billion. SpaceX’s xAI unit is already offering to buy 418 homes near its gas-powered data center in Southaven, Mississippi, if the owners drop their claims.

17 times its bitcoin

CoinDesk framed the size against SpaceX’s bitcoin. The company holds 18,712 BTC, by Bitcointreasuries.net data, worth about $1.38 billion at Monday’s price of $73,862. The project costs about 17 times that. SpaceX and Tesla together hold 30,221 bitcoin. Neither report says how SpaceX will pay for Starbase, and neither links the project to its bitcoin.

SpaceX went public in June, and in February it merged with xAI in a stock deal that valued the combined company at about $1.25 trillion, CoinDesk wrote.

A governor who promised a ban

Six days before the Starbase notice made news, on 3 November, Democrat Gina Hinojosa beat Governor Greg Abbott after campaigning against data centers. “When I am governor I will issue a moratorium, a ban, on all data center approvals until laws can be passed by the Legislature to protect Texans,” she said in a video on 22 October, the Texas Tribune reported. She takes office on 19 January.

Abbott has already paused data center approvals at the state grid operator and at the environmental agency since August, pending an audit expected to end in December. A private power plant could skip the grid queue. The air permit still goes through the environmental agency, and neither report says whether the freeze covers the SpaceX application. After the election Elon Musk posted on X: “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.”

What it means for you

If you own SpaceX shares, the dates to watch are the 9 December hearing and 19 January, when the moratorium Hinojosa promised could start. If you live near Starbase, you can speak at the hearing. If you follow SpaceX for its bitcoin, nothing here changes its 18,712 BTC so far.

Based on CoinDesk’s report of 9 November 2026, RGV Business Journal’s report of 8 November and the Texas Tribune’s report of 4 November, carried by KSAT. Bitcoin price from CoinGecko on 9 November. This is not investment advice.