Context for the November energy trends feature
Innerworkings of AI compute data center
Energy looks like destiny for a fast-moving, intelligence-oriented growth paradigm. North Texas visionary leaders are the frontiersmen developing the next frontiers. With power moves, they are coaxing geology and landing new geographies.
For roughly two decades, with a global pandemic cut out, the U.S. shale revolution and clean energy assets have afforded the U.S. an enviable, robust energy base. This foundation now supports a massive wave of industrial growth not seen since the mid-nineteenth century. It looks like a silicon- and compute-led industrial revolution, but energy is currently in the driver’s seat. Across 2025 to 2027, we’re clocking nearly $2 trillion of spending by the top-four, big tech hyperscalers on AI infrastructure. By comparison, laying the tracks for the U.S.’s railroads was one-half a trillion across 70 years.[i]
Between new AI and digital infrastructure of 40- 60 GW, a realistic nationwide estimate, plus new advanced manufacturing load, powering America’s reindustrialization looks daunting. North Texas leaders however are meeting the dual mandate for both hydrocarbons and electrons with aplomb.
Technology and Tier Shifts
Clip, not part of feature, looks at the Louisiana Hyperion site and Applied’s proximity to it. Applied is not a neocloud firm. Incidentally, Louisiana is part of the 11th Fed district which includes Texas and Southern New Mexico.
Texas was slated to house an outsized proportion of data center builds. TBD now. Trad-market Virginia and an emergent center swathe of the U.S. are attracting large-scale capital. Wes Cummins, chief exec of Dallas’s Applied Digital, a leading-edge AI infrastructure firm, operates in that center part of the country, “Tier 3” or frontier markets. Markets are shifting, owing to the way in which AI technology works. This is a relatively new phenomenon.
In the trends feature:
Courtesy of Applied Digital (image not in feature)
Power has become the most valuable commodity in a race to land compute capacity. Given their ability to translate and hunt down energy for dense computing power, converted crypto firms, like Applied, are thriving. Cummins focuses on stranded capacity. “You have to find certain points on a grid where there's energy being created that can't be delivered somewhere else,” he notes about his targeted center swathe of the U.S. “It's getting really hard to find these days.” Over the past 12 months especially, Cummins says, there are more behind-the-meter, or non-grid connected projects. Applied Digital prefers to be on-grid within the system: “We [plan to] stick with the tried-and-true, plain vanilla, bread-and-butter, grid-tied data centers.”
Extended version
Material beyond the feature:
MEETING hyperscale CUSTOMERS WHERE THEY ARE and why data centers can move to frontier markets
In an interview, Wes Cummins, CEO of Applied Digital, discusses the company's Louisiana data center, roughly 100 to 150 miles away from Meta's Hyperion site. We discuss how Applied Digital compares with neoclouds like CoreWeave and Nebius, who are actually his customers. Companies like his act as the "demand overflow valve" for hyperscalers and neoclouds, which also build some of their own data centers.
