Why AI Is Rewiring the Electrical Grid, and Texas Is Ground Zero

AI’s Physical Appetite: Why Texas Is Becoming the Capital of the Machine World

If you want to know what the future looks like, don’t stare at ChatGPT or Midjourney prompts. Stare at Abilene, Texas.

That’s where Crusoe is building a 1.2 gigawatt “AI factory”: a concrete-and-silicon behemoth that could consume more power than some U.S. states. And it’s not alone. From natgas-fueled training complexes to grid-dodging inference bunkers, Texas is becoming the sovereign zone of machine intelligence.

This isn’t just a story about data centers. It’s a story about electrical, political, and economic power. About why the AI race is shifting from code to concrete. And how deregulated energy markets, fast permitting, and GPU hunger are turning Texas into a kind of techno-feudal core.

The real AI stack isn’t APIs. It’s electrons, chips, cooling, and land. This post breaks down:

• Why ERCOT’s “energy-only” model is perfectly aligned with hyperscaler growth

• How AI firms are building their own power plants to avoid grid fragility

• Why Texas’s SB6 law is the first major state-level attempt to tame sovereign compute loads

• And what it all means for the next war over transmission, governance, and who gets to shape the infrastructure of intelligence

👉 The rest is for paid subscribers only. If you want to understand how AI is reshaping the physical world, and why energy is the new frontier of machine intelligence, upgrade to get the full post.

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