Google is closing in on a multibillion-dollar deal to power a data centre leased to Anthropic in Texas. As per a report by Financial Times, Google is expected to finalise its backing for the project in the coming weeks, which could include the company offering construction loans for Nexus Data Centers, the operator of the site.
The report noted that a consortium of banks was competing to provide financing for the initial phase of the project by mid-year. The financing could total more than $5 billion. However, the support from Google parent Alphabet should allow the project to raise financing at a lower cost owing to the strong credit rating of the tech giant.
Anthropic's Texas data centre:
The 2,800-acre data centre campus is said to be a part of Google's partnership with Anthropic, even as the Claude maker faces off with the Trump administration over the use of its AI in military use cases.
The lease for the project was signed earlier this month and construction is already under way at the Texas site, which has received early-stage debt from asset manager Eagle Point.
The project is said to deliver around 500 megawatts of capacity and could be ready as soon as early 2026, and the eventual plans could include expanding it to about 7.7 gigawatts of capacity.
Reportedly, a significant benefit of the location is its proximity to several major gas pipelines that are operated by companies like Enterprise, Energy Transfer, and Atmos. This could allow Nexus to power the site with its own gas turbines and avoid surge pricing from one energy source.
Notably, data centre developers are increasingly focusing on reducing their reliance on grid connections, which can be time-consuming and expensive to secure. Instead, behind-the-meter power technology has been growing in popularity among Big Tech companies, with around 50 gigawatts of behind-the-meter projects being announced in 2025, as per research provider Cleanview (quoted by Financial Times).
Elon Musk's Colossus data centres in Tennessee and Mississippi reportedly use off-grid gas turbines, while Microsoft and Amazon are also said to be attached to large behind-the-meter projects.
Meanwhile, Meta had announced a deal earlier this week with Entergy Louisiana to power its "Hyperion" data centre with seven new natural gas-fired plants to provide a total of 5.2 gigawatts of electricity to the data centre.
As per estimates from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (quoted by FT), the energy usage from data centres in the state could reach 78GW by 2031, around 36 percent of the state's total power demand.
