SpaceX wants its own power plant for a $24 billion supercomputer

SpaceX wants to build its own supercomputer, and its own power plant to run it.

The company filed a City Notice for a $24 billion project at Starbase, the Texas city in Cameron County built around its main rocket factory and launch site. The filing describes a natural gas power plant and a data centre it calls a "super-compute facility." No construction date has been disclosed.

For anyone holding the stock because of bitcoin, the arithmetic is the news. Twenty-four billion dollars is roughly 17 times the value of the bitcoin SpaceX owns: 18,712 coins, worth about $1.39 billion, according to Bitcointreasuries.net.

$24bn

value of the proposed Starbase project, by the City Notice

17×

the project’s size against SpaceX’s bitcoin holdings, worth about $1.39bn

748MW

generating capacity from 35 gas turbines, owned and operated by SpaceX

The plant is the unusual part

Most AI data centres rent a building near a substation and buy power from the local utility. The City Notice says SpaceX intends to do neither.

"SpaceX proposes to construct, own, and operate a gas-fired power plant and super-compute facility," it reads.

The plant would reportedly run 35 turbines and produce 748 megawatts. That is small next to the largest deals in the sector but structurally different: generation sits on the same site as the load, so the power never travels through a grid the company does not control.

Anthropic1,700 MW

gas generators agreed recently, for $3.4bn

SpaceX748 MW

own plant, 35 turbines, Starbase

Two ways into the same trade. Anthropic is buying generation capacity; SpaceX is filing to own and operate it.

Anthropic recently agreed to buy 1.7 gigawatts of gas-fired generators for $3.4 billion, which is 1,000 megawatts per gigawatt. The notice does not say why SpaceX wants its own plant rather than a contract.

"The AI boom is becoming a gas story," Global Commodity Trader Index, a benchmark for institutional commodity trading firms, said on X. "Tech companies are no longer willing to wait for utilities to deliver power. They're going directly to the source, securing generation capacity and scarce equipment."

The bitcoin is the small side of the balance sheet

SpaceX went public in June in the largest IPO in history. In February, Elon Musk merged his AI company xAI into SpaceX in a stock swap that valued the combined firm at about $1.25 trillion. Against either figure, a$ 1.39 billion bitcoin position is a rounding item.

That is the point of the comparison. A bitcoin treasury was, for a while, the reason a public company's shares moved. Here it is seventeen times smaller than a single facilities filing.

Four gates, and only one is open

File the City Notice
Done. A $24bn project covering a gas plant and a compute facility at Starbase.
Win the tax break
Starbase is being asked for a property tax abatement and access to the Cameron County Enterprise Zone. Public hearing 9 December.
Clear the state audit
Texas paused its grid-connection queue on 3 August until regulators finish auditing data centres, including on-site generation.
Survive the new governor
Gina Hinojosa beat Greg Abbott on 3 November after campaigning against AI data centres.

The plant sits outside the grid connection queue. The audit was written to follow the power, wherever it is generated.

The politics is where the timeline actually breaks. Democrat Gina Hinojosa won the Texas governor's race on 3 November, ousting Republican incumbent Greg Abbott, after campaigning against the energy-hungry facilities and accusing Abbott of letting them multiply.

Abbott had already ordered a pause on 3 August: no further data centres can move through the state grid operator's connection process until regulators finish an audit. That audit covers on-site power generation, and includes a regulatory review of how these facilities affect local water and communities regardless of where their energy source sits.

Which leaves the open question in the filing. A company that builds its own turbines does not need the grid operator's queue — and the state wrote its audit to cover generation anyway. Whether a private plant is a shortcut around the pause or the next thing the pause reaches is not answered in the notice.

Source: CoinDesk, "SpaceX proposes a $24 billion Texas supercomputer and a gas plant," by Omkar Godbole (9 November 2026), reporting a City of Starbase City Notice and data from Bitcointreasuries.net.

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