CoreWeave asks Texas governor-elect for data center cooperation

CoreWeave Inc sent a letter to Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa seeking to work with her incoming administration on present and future data center projects in the state.

“You have made clear that data center growth must work for Texas,” CoreWeave co-founder and chief executive officer Michael Intrator said in the statement. “We strongly support those principles.”

“We welcome the opportunity to work with your transition team on the responsible completion of permitted projects and on clear, durable standards for future development,” he said.

Data center buildings are under construction during a tour of the OpenAI data center in Abilene, Texas on Sept. 23 last year.

Photo: Reuters

Artificial intelligence (AI) companies are navigating a shifting political landscape that is increasingly hostile toward data center development. Democrats prevailed in the US midterm elections in part due to their pledge to impose greater restrictions on the AI infrastructure buildout.

Hinojosa, the first Democrat since 1990 to win an election for Texas governor, pledged during her campaign to implement a statewide data center moratorium and has since outlined plans to “balance” Texas’ reputation as a business-friendly state with plans for stiffer regulations.

“We have always been a pro-business state in Texas, but what changes now with me as governor is it has to be a partnership that benefits Texans,” Hinojosa told CNN on Thursday.

Following last week’s midterm elections, Democrats now control 29 governors’ mansions nationwide, with many calling for statewide moratoriums on data center construction in response to voter frustration.

Separately, protests against data centers continued across Europe on Saturday as citizens took to the streets to voice their concerns about the impact on society and the environment.

Some 2,000 people marched in Dublin, according to broadcaster RTE, and about 1,300 gathered in Helsinki, with demonstrations also held in several smaller towns in Finland, YLE television said.

Representatives from Stop Dirty Data Centres, a coalition of local democracy and climate protest groups, said they aimed to “halt the unchecked expansion of AI data centers and prevent our democracy being taken hostage by big tech industry interests.”

Campaign groups from Scotland to Spain and France to Denmark joined the action calling for a moratorium to pause construction “until we, the people, have democratically decided what is needed to ensure AI and data centers serve people and the planet, not private greed.”

Saturday’s protests followed a demonstration in Amsterdam on Friday, when hundreds of protesters clashed with police at a Microsoft Corp data center, resulting in one arrest.

The global data center buildout has accelerated as technology companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure to run and train AI. The speed of the expansion has alarmed communities concerned about demand for land and electricity, rising energy costs and whether they’ll see any economic benefits.

Ireland has drawn massive investment by US technology giants including Microsoft, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google that turned the country into a major data center hub, one of Europe’s biggest. Data centers accounted for 23 percent of Ireland’s total metered electricity consumption last year, according to the official statistics agency.

On Saturday, demonstrators marched to Google’s offices and to the parliament in Helsinki city center, YLE reported.

Google in September announced its biggest-ever European investment worth 13 billion euros (US$14.5 billion) in Finland, expanding an existing data center and building two new ones. About 80 billion euros worth of server farms are in various stages of planning and construction in Finland, according to the Confederation of Finnish Industries.

Citizens in the Nordic country are increasingly souring on data centers after revelations that Google representatives had cleared woodland, stripped topsoil and built roads at one of the sites before an environmental impact assessment had been completed. The company building the site is facing a criminal inquiry and the government is rolling out legislation to rein in the AI expansion.