Kaufman & Company and ServerDomes Global broke ground on Oct. 7 on Hueco Ranch, a $15 billion geodesic-dome data center campus near Desert Haven in Hudspeth County, Texas. The campus spans roughly 24,000 acres and is planned to generate 350 MW, KTSM reported. County officials say no one told them before work began.
The project
Geodesic dome architectural rendering published alongside local coverage of the ServerDomes Hueco Ranch groundbreaking.
Hueco Ranch sits on formerly idle ranch and oil-and-gas land about 28 miles east of El Paso, along US Highway 62/180. ServerDomes Global lists the campus at 350 MW on its website, with the first 80 MW running 16 months after construction starts.
Kaufman said in a July release that phase one already has tenants. It plans up to ten more domes on the site over the next decade. It did not name the tenants.
"It is a dome with a green roof that blends into the landscape rather than another lit box stretching for miles," said Daniel Kaufman, founder of Kaufman & Company.
Who is building it
ServerDomes Global designs and builds the domes. It is independently owned, according to Kaufman's website. Kaufman Ventures is an investor. Lonestar Kaufman Development Partners, a Kaufman affiliate, is the joint-venture partner on the Texas campus and a sister project outside Salt Lake City.
Interior view showing the server racks and natural convection airflow design inside a ServerDome structure.
The same page says ServerDomes Global is not affiliated with ServerDomes, the Oregon dome developer Baxtel covered in 2023. Local reports described the developer as Boise-based.
Power and water
The domes cool by natural convection, backed by hybrid air, direct liquid, and immersion cooling for dense AI racks. Kaufman says each dome draws up to 90 percent of its power from behind-the-meter sources. In El Paso, the company is developing its own geothermal generation alongside solar, sized to sell surplus power to outside users.
The property sits in Rio Grande Electric Cooperative's service area. That puts it on the WECC grid that serves El Paso, not ERCOT.
No state permit filings for the project have surfaced.
Water comes from a well on the property, drawn once during initial setup, County Judge Joanna MacKenzie told KTSM. After that, a roof catchment system feeds a closed loop.
A county caught off guard
MacKenzie heard rumors of the project on Oct. 8, the day after groundbreaking, and went to the site to meet the contractors.
"When you're talking about a project that could potentially impact locals by way of use of power and water source, I do think that local government should be included in that conversation," she said.
Project representatives apologized and began grading private roads in Desert Haven, KFOX reported. The landowner is donating caliche for road repairs. The project is not seeking county tax abatements, and road-use agreements are still in negotiation. Representatives will present to the Commissioners Court on Oct. 27.
Texas counties have no zoning authority over private land, so the county's leverage is disclosure.
The schedule is also unsettled. Kaufman's July release said construction had begun. MacKenzie says construction could start as early as 2027 and run four to five years. She expects about 800 construction jobs and 200 to 300 permanent jobs.
The borderland cluster
Hueco Ranch joins a fast-growing cluster on El Paso's side of the grid. Baxtel tracks 18 facilities from six providers in the El Paso market.
Meta's El Paso campus, about 25 miles west, plans 366 MW of modular gas generation to support 1 GW. About 40 miles west in New Mexico, Oracle's 2.5 GW Project Jupiter lost a gas pipeline approval in July.
Why it matters
Hueco Ranch sits outside ERCOT, so the state's grid audit does not decide its interconnection. It still faces Gov. Greg Abbott's Sept. 21 order telling TCEQ to issue no data center permits until that audit is done. A
Direct local news graphic illustrating the Hueco Ranch data center project site in Hudspeth County. plan without gas turbines needs fewer of those permits.
That makes the El Paso borderland a test of self-supplied power. Meta is betting on gas. Jupiter's gas plan hit a wall. Hueco Ranch is betting on geothermal, and no resource or permit for the site has been disclosed.
Until it is, treat the 350 MW as a plan. The Oct. 27 meeting is the first chance to see more.