Galaxy Digital is extending its artificial intelligence and high-performance computing ambitions beyond its Helios site in West Texas, acquiring roughly 500 acres in McGregor for a second data center campus designed to begin with 74 megawatts of power capacity in 2028.
The project, being developed with the City of McGregor and local partners, gives Galaxy another large Texas footprint as cryptocurrency miners and digital-asset infrastructure companies compete to convert land, power access and existing technical expertise into AI computing capacity. Galaxy said the McGregor campus could expand to several hundred megawatts by 2030 and will include a private substation.
Galaxy framed the development as a privately funded project, saying the structure is intended to prevent local ratepayers from bearing the cost of electrical infrastructure built for the campus. The company also projected that the site would add at least $130 million to the McGregor-area tax base.
A second Texas campus for Galaxy
The McGregor acquisition creates a separate development path from Helios, Galaxy’s much larger data center complex in Dickens County, West Texas. Helios began as a Bitcoin mining facility before Galaxy repositioned the site toward AI and high-performance computing customers.
The company has already secured approval from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, to expand Helios to 1.63 gigawatts of capacity. That scale is tied to a 15-year, multi-billion-dollar lease agreement with CoreWeave, the AI cloud computing provider.
A gigawatt is 1,000 megawatts, placing Helios among the largest planned computing campuses in the United States. The proposed McGregor build is far smaller in its opening phase, but its planned expansion would give Galaxy capacity in two distinct Texas markets rather than concentrating its entire AI infrastructure strategy in West Texas.
The inclusion of a private substation is central to that strategy. Large-scale data centers require transmission connections, transformers and switchgear that can handle steady, high-load electricity demand. Building dedicated infrastructure can shorten the path to supplying computing customers, though construction schedules remain tied to utility approvals, equipment availability and grid development.
Galaxy’s proposed 2028 energization date also reflects the increasingly long lead times for major U.S. data center projects. Securing a site and designing a facility are often faster than arranging the generation and transmission capacity needed to operate thousands of advanced processors.
Helios expansion carries major financing needs
Galaxy’s rapid buildout will require substantial capital. A report published last week said the company was seeking to raise about $3.5 billion through its first high-yield bond sale to finance the Phase II expansion of Helios. The report linked the financing requirement to Galaxy’s agreement with CoreWeave.
High-yield bonds, often called junk bonds, typically carry higher interest rates because issuers are judged to have more credit risk than investment-grade borrowers. For Galaxy, such a sale would show how AI infrastructure has changed the company’s funding profile: its largest planned investments are increasingly tied to energy-intensive real estate and long-term data center leases rather than trading or crypto-native services.
The CoreWeave agreement provides a potential revenue base behind that borrowing, but it also places pressure on Galaxy to deliver power and construction milestones over a long period. A 15-year customer contract can support large upfront investments, yet the economics depend on completing substations, buildings and network infrastructure on schedule.
Galaxy Digital did not disclose the expected cost of the McGregor campus in its announcement. Its statement that the project will be privately funded indicates that the company expects to finance the site without passing direct grid-related construction costs to local residential customers.
Texas becomes a focal point for AI capacity
Galaxy is entering a Texas data center race that has drawn several former Bitcoin miners, cloud operators and chip companies. Core Scientific said Tuesday that AMD will secure more than 500 MW of capacity beginning in 2027, with an option to scale that figure to 2.5 GW. Core Scientific has separately contracted about 590 MW of computing capacity for CoreWeave across multiple sites.
The Financial Times also reported Tuesday that Nvidia signed leases worth as much as $50 billion for Hut 8’s 1 GW Beacon Point campus in Texas. According to the newspaper, the arrangement involves a purpose-built facility where the customer would shape the technical design around its own equipment requirements.
These agreements are pushing data center operators toward a model closer to industrial infrastructure development. Their competitive advantage rests less on owning computer hardware alone and more on controlling suitable land, transmission access, cooling systems, construction capacity and long-duration customer commitments.
Many operators that originally built out facilities for Bitcoin mining are pursuing that opportunity because they already hold or understand assets that are hard to replicate: large sites, high-voltage electrical equipment and experience managing power-intensive operations. AI workloads can also provide contracted revenue that differs from the variable returns of block-reward mining.
Local power concerns remain a constraint
The race for capacity has also created resistance in communities concerned about electricity prices, water use and noise. New York passed a one-year moratorium earlier this month pausing permits for new data center construction, amid debate over the effects of large facilities on local infrastructure.
Galaxy’s emphasis on private funding and a dedicated substation appears designed to address a version of those concerns in McGregor. The company is presenting the project as a source of tax revenue and locally coordinated development rather than an obligation placed on existing utility customers.
That approach will be tested by the execution timetable. The McGregor site is expected to receive power in 2028, while Galaxy’s Helios commitments already require a much larger construction and financing effort. The company’s ability to connect both campuses to reliable electricity will determine whether its transition from Bitcoin mining infrastructure to AI computing landlord can match the scale of the contracts now reshaping Texas data center development.
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