Via pitchbook.com
The AI arms race is now a real estate arms race, and the capital flowing into data centers dwarfs most crypto fundraises combined.
A data center developer is looking to borrow $15 billion, backed by Google’s guarantees, to build an AI campus and power plant in Texas for Anthropic. The project, developed by Nexus Data Centers, spans roughly 2,800 acres in Hubbard, Texas. The initial phase alone is expected to cost upwards of $5 billion, with banks competing for the financing ahead of a mid-2026 deadline.
The deal structure and Google’s role #
Google is providing construction loan guarantees that essentially tell lenders it will back the project if things go wrong. The campus is targeting an initial capacity of around 500 MW, with potential to scale beyond that. Google’s overall data center investment plans in Texas could approach $40 billion. Backing this loan is a strategic play to ensure its most important AI partner has the compute infrastructure to stay competitive against OpenAI, Meta, and the growing list of well-funded challengers.
Anthropic’s infrastructure ambitions #
In November 2025, Anthropic announced a $50 billion commitment to US AI infrastructure, including data centers in both Texas and New York, developed in partnership with Fluidstack.
Why crypto investors should pay attention #
The energy angle matters. A 500 MW data center in Texas will compete for the same power resources that Bitcoin miners have been tapping for years. Texas has been the promised land for crypto mining operations precisely because of its deregulated energy market and relatively cheap power. As AI data centers absorb more of the state’s electrical capacity, miners could face higher energy costs or reduced availability.
Crypto projects built around decentralized compute, like Render, Akash, and io.net, are betting they can compete with centralized buildouts by aggregating distributed GPU resources. A $15 billion centralized data center project is the clearest possible articulation of the challenge those protocols face.
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