Oh, joy. While the rest of us are wondering if the Lubbock wind is going to finally relocate our trampolines to Oklahoma, our neighbors out in Dickens County are becoming the AI capital of… well, a very dusty corner of West Texas. Galaxy Helios just filed permits for “Phase 2,” a $3.5 billion expansion that proves if you have enough money, you can build a digital empire in the middle of a literal cow pasture.
We’re talking about three new buildings totaling nearly 900,000 square feet of “compute power.” To put that in perspective for the locals, that’s enough room to fit about twenty H-E-Bs, though sadly, none of these buildings will sell you a brisket or a Creamy Creations pint. Instead, they’ll be housing rows of humming servers dedicated to helping AI figure out how to write your kid’s homework or generate deepfakes of your Aunt Linda.
This site used to be a Bitcoin mine back when everyone thought digital gold was the future. Now that the crypto-bubble has the structural integrity of a wet paper towel, they’ve pivoted to AI. Galaxy just secured approval from ERCOT for 1.6 gigawatts of power. That’s right—while we’re all getting “conservation alerts” during the first hint of a summer heatwave, this facility has enough juice to power a small country, or at least keep the lights on while the AI tries to explain why West Texas smells like a combination of cattle feed and broken dreams.
Galaxy claims this is a “routine regulatory step” and is “proud of the economic impact.” Sure, nothing says “local economic boom” quite like a massive, windowless warehouse filled with machines that don’t eat at the local diner or pay property taxes on a ranch. But hey, at least when the grid inevitably groans under the weight of 1.6 gigawatts, we’ll know exactly where all the electricity went.
Is it really “artificial intelligence” if it’s smart enough to convince us that a $3.5 billion shed in Afton is the peak of human progress?
