Crusoe and Lancium have announced plans to build a 1.0 gigawatt AI data center campus in Childress, Texas, the second major project the two companies have undertaken together using the same partnership structure they established in Abilene.

A Second Site Following the Abilene Model

The Childress campus will span 270 acres of land owned by Lancium, which will also develop and manage the site's energy infrastructure.

Crusoe will design, build, and operate the AI data center itself. That division of responsibilities mirrors the arrangement the two companies have executed in Abilene, where Crusoe broke ground in June 2024 and energized its first two buildings within one year before expanding that campus to 1.2 gigawatts.

Crusoe is currently building a second 900-megawatt data center on adjacent Lancium-owned land in Abilene. Construction on the Childress campus is expected to begin in the third quarter of 2026.

The facility will be purpose-built to support the advanced AI computational requirements of a leading hyperscale technology company, though neither Crusoe nor Lancium identified that company by name in their announcement.

Chase Lochmiller, co-founder and CEO of Crusoe, described the new campus as more than a data center.

"Working with Lancium again, in the same partnership model we built together in Abilene, made Childress an easy choice for our next site," he said.

"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." Michael McNamara, CEO of Lancium, echoed that framing.

"Childress is a natural next step in our partnership with Crusoe," he said. "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."

Scale, Power, and Cooling Infrastructure

At full scale, the 1.0 gigawatt grid-connected campus is intended to support the deployment of hundreds of thousands of the industry's most advanced AI accelerators for training or inference workloads.

Behind-the-meter solar generation and energy storage resources will be integrated into the site to enhance grid reliability, energy efficiency, and sustainability, according to the announcement.

On the cooling side, the campus will feature a closed-loop, non-evaporative liquid cooling system designed to optimize water efficiency.

That choice of cooling technology reflects a growing industry emphasis on reducing freshwater consumption at large-scale data center facilities, where traditional evaporative cooling methods can draw heavily on local water supplies.

Lancium, which was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas, describes itself as an energy technology and infrastructure company that designs, develops, and operates gigawatt-scale campuses integrating grid interconnects, behind-the-meter generation, and storage resources.

The company's role across both the Abilene and Childress projects involves acquiring and owning the land, securing the power interconnect, and managing energy orchestration for the campus.

Economic Commitments to Childress County

The announcement outlined several direct economic commitments to the Childress community. Construction activity is expected to create thousands of local construction jobs, while the permanent operational phase of the campus is projected to support more than 100 long-term positions in Childress County.

Beyond employment, Crusoe and Lancium said they will directly invest in local water and other civil infrastructure.

The companies also stated plans to support the community across housing, education, and emergency and other public services, though the announcement did not specify funding amounts or timelines for those community investments.

Both companies described their commitment to community engagement as a core component of the development model, framing the long-term nature of the investment as central to how they intend to operate in Childress.

Crusoe's Expanding Texas Footprint

The Childress announcement adds to what Crusoe described as a deep and growing commitment to Texas.

The company noted that its contracted AI infrastructure capacity approaches 5 gigawatts across data centers and cloud, a figure it disclosed in June 2026.

The Childress project, combined with the existing and expanding Abilene campus, represents a substantial concentration of that capacity within the state.

Crusoe characterizes itself as the industry's first vertically integrated AI infrastructure provider, describing its mission as accelerating the abundance of energy and intelligence.

The company builds AI-optimized data centers and delivers what it calls an AI cloud platform, positioning energy access as central to its infrastructure strategy.

Lancium's involvement in both the Abilene and Childress projects underscores its focus on large-scale campus development that integrates power management with data center hosting.

The company describes its campuses as assets to the grid as well as facilities capable of hosting demanding computational workloads.

The Childress campus represents the latest expansion of a partnership that the two companies have now formalized across multiple sites in Texas, with each project building on infrastructure and operational lessons carried over from the previous one.