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Texas now holds the largest planned data center pipeline in the US, with over 60 gigawatts in development once smaller facilities are counted.
Tracker reports put the core figure for major and AI-focused projects at 40-45 GW. A narrower tally places Texas at 41.7–44.4 GW of planned capacity, which is still the highest of any state. Add in the smaller builds, and the total crosses the 60 GW mark.
The projects behind the number
The single biggest piece of the pipeline is Fermi America’s Matador campus in Carson County. It is planned at 17 GW and is currently under construction.
That one project alone accounts for a large share of the state’s major-project total. It is the largest single data center build in the country by that measure.
Other developers are stacking up their own multi-gigawatt plans. Sailfish and Pacifico Energy are among the names behind sizable Texas projects.
Utilities are seeing the demand show up in their books, too. By late 2025 or early 2026, AEP’s contracted large-load pipeline in Texas had reached 36 GW, up from earlier periods.
Contracted load is not the same as electricity actually flowing. It does mean customers have signed on the dotted line for future capacity, which is more than a press release and a rendering.
Why developers keep picking Texas
The appeal comes down to three things: room, fuel and rules.
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Texas has vast stretches of available land, which matters when a single campus can sprawl across a county. It also has abundant natural gas, which lets developers build behind-the-meter generation. That means producing power on site rather than waiting for the grid to deliver it.
The third piece has been a regulatory environment widely seen as friendly to large builds. Together, those factors have turned Texas into a serious rival to Virginia, which has historically ranked as the top state for data center capacity.
The grid queue and the permit pause
The momentum has run into two obstacles: a crowded grid queue and a sudden political shift.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, manages most of the state’s power system. Its interconnection queue totals approximately 474 GW.
About 90% of those requests come from data centers.
Following the November midterm elections, Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa has committed to an approval freeze while new regulations are considered.
Outgoing Governor Greg Abbott has also ordered an audit of data center interconnection requests. That move halted permit reviews for projects totaling nearly 50 GW.
The gap between ambition and delivery was already wide. BNEF has predicted that just 1.2 GW of ERCOT data center capacity will come online between mid-2026 and early 2027.
What this means for investors and the grid
For investors, utilities are the group to watch. Companies like AEP have been lining up large-load contracts and the infrastructure spending that comes with them.
Data centers make up the overwhelming majority of ERCOT’s queue, so any change in how those requests are reviewed shapes expectations for future load on the Texas grid.
The things to track are concrete. Watch for the scope and length of any approval freeze once the new administration takes office. Watch for the findings of Abbott’s interconnection audit and whether the nearly 50 GW of paused reviews resume. And watch how much capacity actually energizes against BNEF’s 1.2 GW estimate.
