TEXAS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CONNECTION INTELLIGENCE REPORT: FIND Your TOWN

Abilene’s momentum includes a 1.2-gigawatt data center campus from Crusoe Energy Systems that will host one of the first operations of “Stargate,” the $500 billion AI infrastructure investment plan from OpenAI and partners.

Photos courtesy of Crusoe

Texas just released an economic development vision called “Blueprint for a Stronger Texas of Tomorrow” with 10 target industries that cover the big stuff. But even conglomerates had to start up somewhere.

After all, even as major companies move operations and headquarters to Texas in record numbers, the state also keeps leading the nation in sheer population growth. Found in those numbers are small makers of everything from wallpaper to plastic parts, tequila to truck bodies.

“These people are coming, they’re just not plugging into the system,” says Dave Quinn, founder of TexasEDConnection. “We’ve emerged as a place where you can move out of the garage. You’re tinkering but can’t grow where you are because of the restrictive environment you’re in. We thought there was that opportunity. If you join our group, you’re an active economic developer with real money wanting to help. Small manufacturers can come and build their dreams.”

That applies whether you’re launching a candle business out of your sink at home or wanting to be involved with launching satellites. One champion fisherman — Gary Dobyns of Dobyns Rods — made the move from northern California to Texas and saw his high-performance fishing rod business immediately grow by 30%.

“People contacting us are mainly manufacturing in nature,” Quinn says. “It makes a lot of sense when you think about cost of production. Companies want to grow and can’t afford to grow where they are. They’ve reached a point where where they are is no longer a desirable place.”

So they begin looking to marry a business case with a quality of life case. A standard site selection RFI for a site consultant is the bare bones numbers, not the fluff. But the TexasEDConnection approach is “kinda the exact opposite,” Quinn says. “The building, yes, but tell me about your little league. Tell me about the festivals.”

Small business owners are not looking up economic development resources,” he says. “They’re looking up where they want to live. That’s a theme for these small manufacturers. Quality of life first, then workforce, building and so on. There’s more emotion to it, more complexity than just picking the right spot logistically. It’s not about the digits and square footage and workforce numbers. It’s about the ability to connect at a human level.”

AI Knows How to Find Abilene
That said, the small town welcome mat still works even when your feet are big. After all, major players have humans too — even if their business is AI.

Since January 2023, more than 80 major corporate facility investments have landed in TXEDConnection communities. The collective portfolio shows growth in cutting-edge technologies such as AI, advanced plastics waste recycling, storage batteries, electronics, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors.

Here’s how the top performers break out by number of projects:

Those projects include the biggest of the big: OpenAI’s plan to invest $500 billion over the next four years in new U.S. AI infrastructure. “We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately,” the company recently said of its Stargate Project, which includes initial funding from SoftBank, Oracle and MGX and technology partnerships with the likes of Arm, Microsoft, NvidiaA and Oracle.

The deployment is taking concrete shape in the form of a 1.2-gigawatt data center site called the Lancium Clean Campus on the outskirts of Abilene, Texas. Lancium is an energy technology and infrastructure company that advances the decarbonization and stability of the electric power grid. Its partner is San Francisco-based Crusoe Energy Systems LLC, the vertically integrated AI infrastructure provider building the campus. In June, Crusoe announced it had secured a $750 million credit facility from Brookfield Asset Management through its infrastructure debt platform.

“We are excited to partner with Crusoe, a company at the forefront of powering the critical infrastructure needed for AI, including one of the world’s largest AI data centers in Abilene, Texas,” said Eric Wittleder, deputy CIO of Brookfield’s Infrastructure Debt business.

Start putting a few dollars here with a few dollars there and you’re talking real money. Crusoe’s new credit facility from Brookfield follows a $600 million Series D funding round in December 2024, a $225 million credit facility from Upper90 announced in early 2025 and a $15 billion joint-venture with Blue Owl and Primary Digital Interactive to fund the Abilene data center.

TexasEDConnection Organizations

Reached via corporate spokesperson Andrew Schmitt, Crusoe CEO and Co-Founder Chase Lochmiller says, “We’re grateful for the support of the City of Abilene, Taylor County, and the Development Corporation of Abilene in bringing this vision to life.” The the Development Corporation of Abilene (DCOA) first assisted in the expansion of Lancium into Abilene and Taylor County in 2021, when Lancium annexed over 800 acres into the city limits.

Looking for quality of life? Huntsville, Texas, which has welcomed recent investments from Equipmentshare.com, Zenner USA and Flaherty, is also home to Huntsville State Park, which welcomed this enthusiastic group of New Year’s Day hikers on January 1, 2025.

Photo courtesy of Texas Parks & Wildlife Dept.

Last year DCOA estimated that the direct and indirect economic impact of the initial phase of the project (the first two buildings) will be approximately $1 billion over 20 years. “The expansion to a total of eight buildings has the potential to scale that impact by many magnitudes,” Schmitt says.

No wonder DCOA called it “Project Radiance.” In its most recent impact report, Crusoe notes that Abilene was chosen because of “its proximity to abundant clean energy and opportunity for on-site solar development. The company also is building a 350-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant at the site. “This approach accelerates the project’s energization timeline, enables the use of gas instead of diesel for long-term backup power provisioning and unlocks a reduction of both emissions and cost in the long run,” Crusoe states in the impact report. Lancium is building two new electrical substations among other infrastructure at the site.

The project involves an investment of more than $3.4 billion for the first two buildings alone, 4 million sq. ft. under construction, 5,000 construction jobs and ultimately 400 new direct jobs. It will mean an estimated $22.6 million in City of Abilene property tax revenue per year (equal to 32% of the City’s current fiscal year budgeted property tax revenue) and $18 million in Taylor County property tax revenue from all eight buildings for 20 years.

Coppell, Texas, tops the TexasEDConnection list when it comes to projects attracted since January 2023.

Photo by TrongNguyen: Getty Images

“Project Radiance is a testament to the strength of the Abilene and Taylor County economy and the long-term vision of our community,” said DCOA President and CEO Misty Mayo in the organization’s 2024 annual report. Economist Dr. Ray Perryman of The Perryman Group said, “Total ongoing benefits at mature operations levels include $330.6 million in gross product each year.”

“This data center model combines Lancium’s expertise in clean energy with Crusoe’s innovative AI infrastructure, maximizing benefits for both Abilene and the industry,” said Michael McNamara, co-founder and CEO of Lancium, in a November 2024 release. “We are very proud to be part of Abilene, and we will continue to partner with the Abilene community as we develop our site.”

“The Lancium Clean Campus represents a new era of innovation for Abilene,” said Abilene Mayor Weldon Hurt. “These positions will allow families to build their futures right here in West Texas.”

Project Roundup
A tour of other TexasEDConnection communities unveils other groundbreaking projects as well:

In February 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that the third project under the new Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation (JETI) incentives program is waste plastics recycling company Braven Environmental’s $145 million investment in an advanced recycling facility at TexAmericas Center in Texarkana and Bowie County. The Texas energy industry is ready: In March, BASF became the latest to sign a supply agreement with Braven for the company’s end product, Braven PyChem®, to partially replace fossil resources at the BASF TotalEnergies Petrochemical (BTP) facility in Port Arthur. Chevron Phillips Chemical did the same last November.

A new operation from Local Bounti opened in Mount Pleasant in 2024.

Photo courtesy of Local Bounti

“I appreciate Braven choosing our corner of Northeast Texas as the next location for their cutting-edge environmental facility,” said Representative Gary VanDeaver. “But Braven did not do this work alone. I especially want to thank the Governor’s Office, Bowie County, Hooks Independent School District (ISD), Texarkana College and the TexAmericas Center for working hard to show Braven that Northeast Texas was the best possible place they could choose.”

“As we evaluate and prioritize locations for our next Braven sites, the support of state and local governments plays a critical role in our decision-making process,” said Braven Environmental CEO Jim Simon. “We deeply appreciate the strong support we’ve received from the Governor’s Office of the great State of Texas, Hooks ISD and the TexAmericas Center.”

TexAmericas Center is one of the largest mixed-use industrial parks in the Americas, with 12,000 acres, 3.5 million sq. ft. of commercial and industrial property, and a mission to create 12,000 jobs on the footprint of a former Department of Defense property. The site is home to 33 employers leasing over 1.1 million sq. ft., including yet another expansion by Rowe Casa Organics.

In November, Mexico-based Electrolit, maker of a hydration beverage crafted with pharmaceutical-grade ingredients, announced its first U.S. manufacturing facility, a $400 million, 600,000-sq.-ft. project in Waco that will create more than 200 jobs. The production hub, slated to open in early 2026, came about thanks to collaboration with the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce, enabling the company to secure land in Texas Central Park, Waco’s largest industrial park. The Chamber was one part of a regional economic development partnership involving the City of Waco, McLennan County and the Waco Industrial Foundation.

The annual report from Kilgore Economic Development Corporation (KEDC) notes that the five projects secured by the community in 2022-2023 — including major investments from Camfil USA and Keeprite Refrigeration — “represent capital investment under contract greater than any year in KEDC’s 34-year history, and jobs under contract near the highest recorded. Even more impressively, those companies are projected to invest a minimum of $65,043,633 in new real property along with $2,889,900 in land value. The real property value alone exceeds the total investment projections during several of the past five years.” Over those five years, KEDC has closed 24 projects that generated more than 2,900 jobs and nearly $370 million in new and retained capital investment.

For a recent episode of his popular “Gone to Texas” podcast series, Dave Quinn talked to Jacksonville Economic Development Corporation (JEDCO) President Shane Pace about LU-VE, a manufacturer of air heat exchangers for industrial and commercial refrigeration, which acquired a local company in 2019 and has chosen to expand with 225,000 new sq. ft. of manufacturing, warehouse and office space that involves an investment of more than $30 million and the creation of more than 50 new jobs.

“They chose to stay in Jacksonville because of the workforce and the partnerships with the City and JEDCO,” Pace told Quinn. “We have a robust manufacturing presence with a skilled workforce, and the City and EDC that are nimble and ready to step up and make a project happen. We move much more quickly than other larger cities and we will be their partner not only through the process, but as long as they are here in Jacksonville.”

Mount Pleasant Economic Development Corporation in February welcomed NXG Truck Bodies, which is making a $20 million investment to construct and operate a new 120,000-sq.-ft. manufacturing site that will create a net 95 new jobs at a location annexed into the city limits. The town in June 2024 celebrated the grand opening of a controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) operation from Montana-based Local Bounti, which is growing its national network of sites using its patented Stack & Flow Technology®. The Mount Pleasant site is focused on the company’s Living Butter lettuce and cut products and has ongoing agreements with such popular Texas grocery stores as H-E-B and Brookshire’s as well as Walmart.

In May 2025, Hoover Treated Wood Products celebrated 70 years in the business of producing fire-retardant treated wood, just as it opened a new corporate office in Augusta, Georgia. The newest chapter of the company’s manufacturing history opened for business in 2023 in the form of a modern new plant in Fairfield, Texas, that the company says “showcases our dedication to staying ahead of industry standards.”