Beacon Point moves ahead with no local oversight
A former Bitcoin mining company plans to build one of the largest AI data center campuses in Texas on roughly 525 acres of farmland just outside of Robstown and Calallen, and no local government has the authority to approve or reject it.
Hut 8 Corp., a Miami-based company that made its name in cryptocurrency mining, announced in May that it had signed a 15-year lease worth $9.8 billion for the first phase of its Beacon Point AI Data Center Campus in Nueces County. The company has so far declined to say who the lessee is, describing it only as a “high-investment-grade tenant” that will use the facility for artificial intelligence computing.
The first phase alone would deliver 352 megawatts of computing capacity, which Hut 8 says would make it the most compute-dense data center in the nation. The company has secured an interconnection agreement with AEP Texas for 1,000 megawatts, roughly the output of a large power plant, and says the first two phases represent about $17 billion in capital investment. Site clearing has begun, with the first phase projected to come online in the first quarter of 2027.
The site sits at 4650 FM 1694, a parcel covering about four fifths of a square mile. Hut 8 has not yet disclosed the footprint of the phase one building, but rough math suggests its scale. The company's Vega mining facility, west of Amarillo, packs 205 megawatts into 162,000 square feet using dense liquid cooling. At comparable density, 352 megawatts implies a structure approaching 300,000 square feet, but at the lower densities typical of hyperscale AI facilities the footprint of the Robstown facility could be double that or more – a single building rivaling a regional shopping mall.
Because the site lies just outside of both Robstown and Corpus Christi city limits in unincorporated Nueces County, the project requires no approval from any city council or county commissioners court. Most homes along the property line are in Calallen, with some homes along FM 1694 sitting just yards from the proposed campus, and Calallen East Elementary school located only a few thousand feet away.
The announcement comes as Nueces County remains under Stage 3 drought restrictions, although Hut 8 says Beacon Point will not use municipal water for cooling. According to Hailey Miller, the company's director of government affairs, the facility will use a closed-loop cooling system holding about 1.8 million gallons, trucked in from outside the county, sealed, and recirculated for four to seven years before needing a refill. Miller has pledged that the company will not use municipal water for cooling under any circumstance.
But those assurances are, so far, verbal. No binding agreement requires Hut 8 to keep them, and residents interviewed by KRIS 6 News have said they won’t believe the commitments until they are in writing. Environmental advocates have also questioned whether closed-loop systems perform as promised at this scale.
Power is the larger question. A 1,000-megawatt load would be among the largest single connections on the AEP Texas system in the region. Miller says Hut 8 has pre-funded all infrastructure upgrades needed to serve its load, so no costs would be passed to ratepayers. The company points to $4.25 billion in construction bonds secured independently of Hut 8's balance sheet as evidence the project will not depend on the company's own finances. Hut 8 continues to report massive losses as a corporation, including a $253.1 million net loss in Q1 2026, with its second-quarter earnings release scheduled for August 4.
On taxes, Hut 8 declined to answer whether it has requested or received any local and state tax abatements. County Judge Connie Scott has said the county could not have granted one because its abatement policy was out of date at the time, but the county could still consider other arrangements, such as a payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) agreement, which would reduce what the project owes.
Hut 8 estimates roughly 1,900 temporary construction jobs and around 200 permanent positions, and says it is working with local colleges and trade programs on hiring. The company has promised community information sessions, though none have been scheduled. Its CEO, Asher Genoot, has taken a harder line, telling the outlet Blockspace in May that opposition to Beacon Point is driven by misinformation and “fears that are not true” and suggesting that protesters at data center meetings are politically motivated outsiders. On the issue of declining to name the project’s tenant, Genoot said it amounted to avoiding “unnecessary eyeballs.”
Hut 8’s Miller told KRIS 6: “We're not simply here to build in the community; we want to build with the community.” But residents near the site describe a very different experience: a massive, multibillion-dollar project announced without warning, sited directly across the street from their homes, backed by a tenant whose name they are not allowed to know, and subject to no local authority.