A proposed AI data center near Cheyenne, Wyoming, is drawing attention because of the size of its planned power demand. Announced on Monday by Mayor Patrick Collins of Cheyenne, the project would be built by energy infrastructure company Tallgrass and AI data center developer Crusoe.
The plan starts large and gets much larger. The facility would begin at 1.8 gigawatts of power use and could scale up to 10 gigawatts at full deployment.
A project larger than household demand
The first phase alone would consume 15.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) annually. According to the source article, that is more than five times the electricity used by every household in Wyoming combined.
The comparison becomes even sharper when the data center is measured against all of Wyoming’s current electricity use. The initial phase would represent 91 percent of the 17.3 TWh now consumed by the state’s residential, commercial, and industrial sectors combined.
At full scale, the proposed facility would move beyond Wyoming’s present electricity generation. A 10-gigawatt deployment would consume 87.6 TWh of electricity annually, which is double the 43.2 TWh the entire state currently generates.
Those figures explain why this is not a routine infrastructure announcement. Wyoming is the least populous US state, and a single AI data center campus could create an electricity load that sits on the scale of a state-level system.
Why the public grid is not the plan
The source article states that drawing this much power from the public grid is untenable. Because of that, the project is expected to rely on its own dedicated gas generation and renewable energy sources, according to Collins and company officials.
That approach may limit direct pressure on the public grid, but it does not make the power demand small. Even if the electricity is self-generated, the facility would still represent a major new local consumer of energy.
For Wyoming, that is a notable shift. The state currently sends nearly 60 percent of its generated power to other states. A project of this size would make local electricity demand a much larger part of the state’s energy story.
Governor Mark Gordon framed the project around its potential value for natural gas producers. In a company statement, he said, “This is exciting news for Wyoming and for Wyoming natural gas producers.”
Where the Cheyenne site fits
The proposed site is several miles south of Cheyenne near the Colorado border off US Route 85. The project still needs approval from state and local regulators.
Collins suggested the developers may want to move quickly. “I believe their plans are to go sooner rather than later,” he said.
Cheyenne already has experience with large data center projects. Since 2012, Microsoft and Meta have built facilities there, attracted by the area’s cool climate and access to energy.
The new Tallgrass and Crusoe project would push that pattern into a different category. Wyoming is the nation’s third-biggest net energy supplier and produces 12 times more total energy than it consumes, with production dominated by fossil fuels. But the article makes clear that electricity supply is still finite.
The unanswered tenant question
Tallgrass and Crusoe have announced the partnership, but they have not revealed who would use the computing capacity. That gap has led to speculation about possible tenants.
One subject of speculation is a possible connection to OpenAI’s Stargate AI infrastructure project, which was announced in January. When The Associated Press asked whether the Cheyenne project was part of that effort, Crusoe spokesperson Andrew Schmitt did not confirm it.
“We are not at a stage that we are ready to announce our tenant there,” Schmitt said. “I can’t confirm or deny that it’s going to be one of the Stargate.”
The source article also notes OpenAI’s related infrastructure activity elsewhere. OpenAI recently activated the first phase of a Crusoe-built data center complex in Abilene, Texas, in partnership with Oracle.
Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, told The Associated Press last week that the Texas facility generates “roughly and depending how you count, about a gigawatt of energy” and represents “the largest data center—we think of it as a campus—in the world.”
OpenAI has also committed to developing an additional 4.5 gigawatts of data center capacity through an agreement with Oracle. “We’re now in a position where we have, in a really concrete way, identified over five gigawatts of energy that we’re going to be able to build around,” Lehane told the AP.
The company has not disclosed locations for those expansions. Wyoming was not among the 16 states where OpenAI said earlier this year that it was searching for data center sites.
What the proposal signals
The Cheyenne proposal shows how AI infrastructure can turn electricity into the central issue in a data center project. The headline feature is not only computing capacity, but the energy system required to support it.
For Wyoming, the proposal connects several forces already present in the state: natural gas production, renewable energy sources, power exports, and growing interest from major data center operators. The difference is the scale.
If approved and built, the project would put a single AI data center in comparison with Wyoming’s household electricity demand, total electricity use, and current generation. That is why the plan has become a clear example of how AI development is changing the size and shape of power demand.