Crusoe is the developer behind Google's data center campus under construction in Armstrong County, Texas, the company said on Sept. 28. The site sits outside Amarillo, and it pairs with 531 megawatts of adjacent West Texas wind, a design that puts generation rather than land at the center of the build.
The campus is the Goodnight project in Claude, where Crusoe files plans under the name Project Llano. It connects to Serena's Goodnight 1 wind farm, a 265.5 MW project already operating, and Goodnight 2, an equally sized farm now under construction that Crusoe says its development helped catalyze. When turbine output exceeds campus demand, the surplus returns to the grid, which Crusoe says reduces curtailment and benefits local ratepayers.
Google's identity as the end user had been an open question until the disclosure. The campus joins Crusoe's two Abilene sites under development, and it traces to a wider commitment: Google folded Armstrong and Haskell counties into a $40 billion Texas investment plan announced in November 2025, according to TheEnergyMag. Crusoe did not disclose the site's electrical demand, cost or opening date, and the 531 MW figure measures wind generation, not computing capacity.
"Building the future of AI requires a new kind of infrastructure, starting with energy," said Chase Lochmiller, CEO and co-founder of Crusoe. "We broke ground in June 2025 and are building at the same swift pace we set in Abilene." Construction began that June, and more than 5,500 workers are on site daily. The campus is designed around a closed-loop, non-evaporative liquid cooling system meant to hold water use to domestic needs.
Power supply is the harder question. Research firm Cleanview identified a January 2026 permit application for a 933 MW natural gas plant at Goodnight that would serve two buildings behind the meter, without a grid connection, as reported by w.media. Google told Cleanview it had not signed an agreement to buy that plant's electricity. A proposed source is not a signed contract, and that gap sits at the center of the deal.
Baxtel counts 172 data center facilities across West Texas, led by Crusoe with 13 sites and IREN with 11, and lists IREN's Childress campus as the market's largest at 200 MW.
The disclosure converts a rumored AI campus into a named one. Google gets a confirmed West Texas anchor, Crusoe gets a hyperscaler for a site engineered around abundant local wind, and both wager that co-locating load with generation beats waiting in ERCOT's connection queue. For anyone choosing a site this cycle, the signal is blunt: the power is the product.
Related on Baxtel
