SpaceX pitches $24B AI supercomputer with its own gas plant in Texas

SpaceX has its eye on South Texas — and it wants to bring its own power supply. The company has proposed a gas-fired power plant plus a super-compute facility on roughly 444 acres east of Brownsville, near the Port of Brownsville, according to a public notice dated November 6, 2026. The estimated initial capital investment: $24 billion.

The numbers behind the site are big. The notice describes infrastructure for up to 35 temporary gas turbines, expected to deliver an initial output of about 748 MW. Construction paperwork is already moving — the project has applications in for mass grading and air-quality permits covering those turbines. SpaceX job postings have been leaking the plan too, referencing the "Starbase supercomputer" and its on-site power generation model.

This isn't a one-off bet. SpaceX merged with xAI in February 2026, and the combined company has been stacking up AI infrastructure ever since. Its stated goal is roughly 13 GW of total AI compute capacity by the end of 2027, which makes Starbase's initial 748 MW a real piece of the pie — but only a slice. Before any of this surfaced, the company locked in a $40 billion GPU financing deal with Apollo.

Now it heads into a room full of locals. The City of Starbase will take up the proposal at a public hearing set for December 9, 2026, with tax abatements and economic development agreements on the agenda. For residents around the Port of Brownsville, a 444-acre industrial site with up to 35 gas turbines is a substantial new neighbor — and the hearing is their formal chance to weigh in.

Texas politics could complicate things. Newly elected governor Gina Hinojosa has called for a pause on new data center approvals, raising the question of whether the Starbase supercomputer runs into regulatory trouble later. How a statewide pause would interact with a local hearing on tax abatements isn't clear yet, and whether a facility with its own power plant gets treated differently from a grid-connected data center remains open.

The on-site generation is the detail to watch. Pairing compute with dedicated gas turbines hands SpaceX more control over its power, but it drags emissions, air-quality permits and land use straight into the approval fight. December 9 is the first real checkpoint — the terms on those abatements will show how much local support the project has, and how generous the deal gets.