A week after Texas froze the queue, every big AI company has agreed to the governor's data center terms
Governor Greg Abbott announced on Monday that Meta will follow the data center standards he set, joining OpenAI, Amazon, Google and QTS. OpenAI put its commitment in a letter the same day, pledging to pay for its own infrastructure, back new electricity generation in Texas and hold down its water use. Abbott's terms: build and pay for your own grid connection instead of pushing the cost onto households and small businesses, reuse your water, lower electricity costs for Texans, stay out of residential neighbourhoods, and stop relying on taxpayer-funded incentives. The pressure came from an order on 3 August that stopped regulators approving any new data center grid hookup until each project is audited for power, water, tax breaks, community impact and ownership. Grid operator ERCOT is tracking more than 1,800 projects in the queue asking for over 474 gigawatts — about five times the state's record peak demand.
Related stories
Nevada just cleared up to 8,000 driverless taxis for Las Vegas — Tesla's ceiling went from 10 to 5,000 in five weeks2026-08-21OpenAI has started a team whose stated worry is that a company like OpenAI ends up with too much power
2026-08-21OpenAI says it can police misuse without keeping your company's data — and it is pointing at Anthropic while saying so
2026-08-20A Florida officer ran his ex-wife's plate 717 times. A Kansas city has just switched its cameras off.
2026-08-20Six months ago Hollywood sent ByteDance a cease-and-desist. This week they signed a truce — and no money changed hands.
2026-08-20