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Public reporting supports a $30–33 billion estimate for construction across phases of the Abilene campus, but it does not verify the headline’s proposed $17 billion for chips, $3 billion for power, and $2.4 billion for construction. Those line items should be treated as an uncorroborated estimate, not a disclosed project budget. Scope matters: reports describe an eight-building flagship campus, a separate Microsoft expansion, and a later filing for one building, each with different cost and capacity boundaries.

Is the $30 billion figure supported?

Partly. On August 13, 2026, CNR Magazine reported a total construction cost of $30–33 billion across the Abilene campus’s construction phases. That is a campus-wide construction estimate as described in the report; it is not a verified itemized budget for building and equipping exactly 1 GW of capacity.

The available public figures use different definitions and project boundaries. A 2025 Texas Economic Development Council award submission said Project Radiance was expected to involve more than $47 billion in capital investment to develop eight buildings. That earlier capital-investment figure is not directly interchangeable with CNR’s later construction-cost estimate. Neither establishes the proposed chip, power, and construction allocations.

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What do the reported costs cover?

The $30–33 billion campus construction estimate

CNR’s August 2026 estimate concerns construction across campus phases. Its report identifies Crusoe as developer and DPR as general contractor for the then-current phase. The source does not provide a detailed accounting that confirms the headline’s separate equipment and power amounts.

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The $6.3 billion Building 9 filing

A Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation filing, TABS2026008297, lists an estimated $6.3 billion cost for Abilene Building 9’s core and shell. The filing describes a 738,382-square-foot project, with a February 21, 2026 start date and an April 15, 2027 completion date. This is one building’s filing estimate—not the total cost of the flagship campus or the broader site.

The $3.5 billion economic-impact estimate

A February 2025 Perryman Group report estimated about $3.5 billion in gross product and 31,050 job-years from construction activity, including multiplier effects. These are modeled regional economic impacts, not the amount spent to construct the facility.

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What is included in the Abilene campus plan?

CNR described an eight-building, four-million-square-foot campus plan. Its account of the initial phase identified two operational buildings with approximately 200–300 MW of capacity, filled with NVIDIA GPUs. The campus uses high-density AI infrastructure and direct-to-chip liquid cooling, according to CNR.

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That description helps explain why a data-center project’s overall cost cannot be equated with its building shell alone: equipment and supporting infrastructure are substantial parts of an AI campus. But the reviewed public reporting does not establish the headline’s $17 billion chip allocation, $3 billion power allocation, or $2.4 billion construction allocation as actual project accounts.

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Why the 1 GW label needs qualification

The sources describe a project that has changed in scope over time. CNR’s original flagship description covers an eight-building plan. In March 2026, the Associated Press reported on a neighboring Microsoft expansion that would bring the broader site to ten buildings and an expected 2.1 GW. The AP report also described a planned 900 MW on-site power plant for that expansion.

The expansion is not the same thing as the original flagship campus, and the combined-site capacity is not a basis for relabeling every reported cost as the price of exactly 1 GW. Capacity can refer to different boundaries or measures; the cited reports do not establish that the $30–33 billion construction estimate maps to precisely 1 GW.

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How the campus is powered and cooled

Oracle’s Abilene project page says the campus connects directly to ERCOT and draws from the regional energy supply, including wind. Oracle says GE Vernova natural-gas turbines provide backup power. Separately, AP reported that the Microsoft expansion plan included a 900 MW on-site power plant and contrasted it with a 350 MW gas-fired plant attached to the OpenAI/Oracle project. AP said Oracle had described the latter as backup while the data centers primarily draw from the grid.

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Oracle also describes its cooling system as a one-time-fill, closed-loop, non-evaporative system and estimates roughly 50,000 gallons per building annually for cooling maintenance. This is Oracle’s estimate, not an independently measured figure. CNR’s description of direct-to-chip liquid cooling identifies the technology approach, but does not independently verify Oracle’s water-use estimate.

How to read the figures without conflating them

Figure What it refers to Source and date
$30–33 billion Construction cost across campus phases as reported; not a verified 1 GW itemized budget CNR Magazine, August 13, 2026
$6.3 billion Estimated cost for Building 9 core and shell, 738,382 square feet Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation filing TABS2026008297; accessed 2026
More than $47 billion Expected capital investment to develop eight Project Radiance buildings, in an economic-development submission Texas Economic Development Council, 2025
About $3.5 billion gross product; 31,050 job-years Modeled construction-phase regional economic impacts, including multiplier effects; not construction spending The Perryman Group, February 21, 2025

These amounts should not be added together: they refer to different scopes, definitions, and purposes. In particular, the Building 9 filing is a single-building estimate, while the $30–33 billion figure is reported across campus phases; the more-than-$47-billion figure is capital investment stated in an earlier economic-development document.

What would verify the headline’s breakdown?

To treat the $17 billion, $3 billion, and $2.4 billion figures as project costs, readers would need a source that identifies who produced them, which project boundary and date they cover, and what each category includes. The available reporting provides no public accounting that confirms those line items. Until that accounting is available, the sound conclusion is narrower: a published report puts campus-phase construction at $30–33 billion, while the detailed breakdown and its relationship to 1 GW remain unverified.

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