At a glance
- The tract lies between Boca Chica Blvd and the Port of Brownsville in Cameron County, and the build would proceed in phases, Data Center Dynamics reported.
- For advisors and allocators tracking AI infrastructure, the abatement is the material new term: if approved, it reduces the project's property tax cost over the life of the improvements.
- The vote sits with a commission in a city of roughly 500 residents, many of whom work for SpaceX.
SpaceX plans a gas-fired power plant and supercomputing facility on 444 acres east of Brownsville, Texas, at a potential cost of up to $24 billion, according to a public notice reported by Bloomberg.
The Starbase City Commission will consider a property tax abatement agreement for the project at its Dec. 9 meeting. The tract lies between Boca Chica Blvd and the Port of Brownsville in Cameron County, and the build would proceed in phases, Data Center Dynamics reported.
For advisors and allocators tracking AI infrastructure, the abatement is the material new term: if approved, it reduces the project's property tax cost over the life of the improvements. The Dec. 9 vote determines whether that incentive is granted.
The vote sits with a commission in a city of roughly 500 residents, many of whom work for SpaceX. Bobby Peden, a SpaceX vice president, is mayor. SpaceX picked what was then Boca Chica for a rocket launch site in 2014, and Elon Musk announced plans to incorporate a city there in 2021. Starbase was incorporated in 2025.
The computing side would belong to SpaceXAI, the company's data center and AI division. SpaceXAI operates facilities around Memphis — one in Tennessee and the rest across the state line in Mississippi — used to run the Grok chatbot and to sell AI cloud services to clients including Anthropic and Google. Musk has claimed more than 1 GW of capacity in the Memphis facilities, a figure that has been disputed, and he announced two new Mississippi data centers named Gun Range and Spam.
In Arizona, SpaceXAI is seeking a permit for a 6 GW campus in Cochise County: up to nine buildings on 747 acres near the Willcox Playa, a dry lake 80 miles east of Tucson, as Private Wealth Daily previously reported. Musk is also hoping to build a $20 billion chip factory in Texas, called TeraFab.
Pairing generation and compute on one tract would let the site supply its own power rather than wait on a utility. SpaceXAI's other projects — a disputed 1 GW claim in Memphis and a 6 GW plan in Arizona — are the scale against which a phased first build at Starbase gets sized.
The Cochise County zoning decision and the Starbase abatement vote both fall on Dec. 9.
From launch site to abatement vote at Starbase
Dated milestones for Starbase, Texas, culminating in the commission's Dec. 9 vote
- 2014SpaceX picks Boca Chica for its rocket launch site (Completed)
- 2021Musk announces plans to incorporate a city called Starbase (Completed)
- 2025Starbase is officially incorporated (Completed)
- Dec. 9Commission considers the property tax abatement (Current stage)
Show as table
| Date | Event | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | SpaceX picks Boca Chica for its rocket launch site | |
| 2021 | Musk announces plans to incorporate a city called Starbase | |
| 2025 | Starbase is officially incorporated | |
| Dec. 9 | Commission considers the property tax abatement |
Reported by the Data centers & fiber desk from Data Center Dynamics, Bloomberg and Private Wealth Daily archive. Published . Corrections