SpaceX Plans a $24 Billion Supercomputer at Its Texas Rocket Base. It Would Make Its Own Power.

Elon Musk’s rocket company wants to build one of the biggest computer projects in America right next to the place it launches Starship, and it wants to make its own electricity to run it.

A public hearing notice posted Friday by the City of Starbase, Texas, says it plainly: “SpaceX proposes to construct, own, and operate a gas-fired power plant and super-compute facility.” The price tag: “Estimated capital investment for initial phases of the project is approximately $24 billion, which may be constructed over multiple phases and include future expansions.”

That is the first official number anyone has put on the project. Local site Gateway to Mars was first to report the notice.

Where it would go

The site is “an approximately 444-acre tract just east of the City of Brownsville, between Boca Chica Blvd and the Port of Brownsville,” inside Starbase city limits. That’s about 0.7 square miles. Starbase annexed the land on a SpaceX request in September, after Brownsville released it from its own city limits in August, Gateway to Mars reported.

Why a rocket company needs a supercomputer

The notice doesn’t say what the computers are for. But SpaceX merged with Musk’s SI company, xAI, the maker of the Grok chatbot, in February, Ars Technica reported at the time. Training big SI systems takes enormous amounts of computing power and electricity. A SpaceX job posting for a turbine mechanic at Starbase says the base “is standing up on-site power generation for the Starbase AI supercomputer,” according to FourWeekMBA.

How much power

The city notice gives no megawatts. A pending state air permit filing for the SpaceX “Boca Chica Facility” lists 35 gas turbines in the first phase, about 748 megawatts, to be swapped later for eight larger GE Vernova turbines of about 708 megawatts, The 956 Report found. For scale, a megawatt is enough to run several hundred homes.

Building your own power plant beside your computers means not waiting years in line for the grid. It’s the same move other SI builders are making, including Anthropic, which unga.news reported this morning is paying for its own gas generators.

What happens next

SpaceX is asking for a property tax break. The Starbase City Commission will weigh “a property tax abatement agreement” and “a related economic development agreement” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 9. The notice says “interested persons are invited to attend the meeting and to be heard.” Nothing has been approved.

What the notice leaves out: how big the tax break would be or for how long, how many jobs the project would bring, and how much water it would use. Water is the question locals will ask first. The Rio Grande Valley is short on it, and SpaceX’s separate water deal with Brownsville is worth up to $220 million, The 956 Report noted.