Data center startup ECL claims that it will build a 1GW AI data center on a more than 600-acre site east of Houston, Texas, powered by hydrogen.
The TerraSite-TX1 will initially have a capacity of 50MW, coming next summer, at a cost of around $450 million. AI cloud provider Lambda will be the first customer, but is not taking the whole 50MW.
“The data center technology committed to by ECL is truly transformative in the industry,” said Ken Patchett, Lambda's VP of data center infrastructure.
“We believe ECL’s technology could unlock a powerful and eco-conscious foundation for AI advancement. This new infrastructure could give researchers and developers essential computational resources while drastically reducing the environmental impact of AI operations.”
ECL launched its first modular hydrogen data center back in May, with a small deployment at its site in Mountain View, California. Each module supports 1MW, and can cool up to 75kW per rack.
For the TerraSite, ECL said that it has three pipelines of hydrogen that will feed the facility, with an energy cost of 0.08-0.12/kWh.
The company repeatedly touted the project as producing zero emissions, but the hydrogen will come from natural gas using steam methane reformation - a process that causes carbon emissions. Update: ECL told DCD that it was referring to data center operations, not the end-to-end process.
In 2025, an expected 50 percent of that will be blue hydrogen, where the carbon is mostly captured, but another 50 percent will be grey, where it is not. A year later, the company hopes to shift to 80 percent blue and 20 percent green, where it is produced by renewable energy.
“While others talk about delivering off-grid, hydrogen-powered data centers in five, ten, or 20 years, only ECL is giving the AI industry the space, power, and peace of mind they and their customers need, now,” said Yuval Bachar, co-founder and CEO of ECL.
“The level of innovation that we have introduced to the market is unprecedented and will serve not only us and our customers but the entire data center industry for decades to come.”
ECL is currently seeking funding for the entire $8 billion project, following its initial deployment. It raised $10m from Hyperwise Ventures earlier this year.
