Data center development has arrived in Jackson. Not the bays of the computers themselves, but the tech companies and government enablers looking to build.
Over two days at The Cloudveil hotel last week, representatives from Meta and Amazon mingled with federal energy and environmental officials at the invite-only Data x Power summit.
The goal was to bring more data center investment to the energy-rich Cowboy State. Organizer Paul Bonifas said the public will have a chance to weigh in after the companies are convinced this is the place to invest.
“None of these projects can operate without a social license,” he said. “You have to have the buy-in of the people in the community.”
Earlier this year, Laramie County commissioners unanimously approved what could become the largest single AI campus in the U.S. That’s only the latest large data center campus to pop up around in the state. While they have drawn some scrutiny from local organizations, Wyoming has broadly appeared more accepting than some of its Western neighbors of the vertical and economic development.
Bonifas said that’s because the southeast Wyoming projects “worked with the local communities to build roads. They listen to them.”
The event comes as some Congress members and Mountain West counties seek to halt data center development. They worry about tech companies taking the lion's share of water and power.
Gov. Mark Gordon planned to welcome officials from the U.S. Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, according to the event website. But the public and press weren’t invited. That’s to give industry executives the chance to speak frankly, said fellow organizer Jacob Hochard, a University of Wyoming economics professor.
“There are no secrets,” he told KHOL. “There’s no kind of Illuminati behind the doors.”
The resort town is an ideal place to wine and dine the largest tech companies, he said. Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft all sent representatives. The latter two have already launched major projects in Cheyenne.
That’s evidence the industry has arrived in Wyoming, where oil and gas reserves could play a key role, Bonifas said. “Energy is currently the bottleneck.”
The Cowboy State is also on a shortlist for OpenAI’s Stargate expansion to build computers that would power ChatGPT.
But for all the energy production in Wyoming, most of that power is sent out of the state to existing customers, according to Wyoming Energy Authority Executive Director Rob Creager.
That means data center developers looking to build here will likely have to also build their own energy supply.
“You can’t just throw a gigawatt-scale data center up, because that disrupts the rest of the system,” he said.
Water is another limiter, but Creager sees it as an opportunity to innovate rather than a reason projects shouldn’t go forward. The energy authority is working to connect developers and land owners with utilities and opportunities for self-generation.
“Whatever it may be,” he said, the question is: “how can we make that work in the state of Wyoming?”
They are already seeing some early traction.
Philip Anschutz, a conservative billionaire, is looking into adding gas to the wind farm on his Saratoga ranch in order to possibly power a data center, Creager said.
And if neighboring states like Utah want to build data centers, Wyoming could likely increase generation to power them, he said.
