SpaceX has filed a public hearing notice to build a roughly $24 billion gas‑fired power plant and super‑compute facility in Starbase, Texas. The proposal, submitted during a public meeting scheduled for December 9, includes a request for a property tax abatement and an economic development agreement from the Starbase City Commission.
The project would be among the largest private investments in the Rio Grande Valley and would allow SpaceX to skip the lengthy process of connecting to Texas’ main power grid. The notice does not disclose the size of the abatement, its duration, or the plant’s generating capacity and computing scale.
SpaceX, which acquired Elon Musk’s AI lab xAI earlier this year, plans to construct, own and operate the facilities. The company has already filed plans for an 8‑mile natural‑gas pipeline, Starpipe, to feed the plant, which is expected to be operational by January 2027. The pipeline will convert gas into liquid methane for Starship rockets.
In its latest quarterly report, SpaceX announced a 161% revenue jump and a ninefold increase in AI revenue. It has been renting computing capacity to Google, Anthropic and other clients.
With voters rejecting data‑center projects in 40 of 41 local ballot measures and Democrats gaining control of Congress and the Texas governor’s office in the midterms, the company’s proposal comes amid growing opposition to new data‑center developments.
SpaceX will review the tax abatement and economic development agreement at the December meeting. The company has not yet disclosed how much it hopes to save or how long the abatement would last.
