HAWTHORNE, Calif. — SpaceX has stepped forward as the force behind a sprawling data center campus planned for Cochise County, Arizona, confirming at a November 4 community meeting that it intends to build as much as six gigawatts of computing power on roughly 747 acres near the Apache Generating Station.
The project, filed locally under the name Tombstone Resources L.L.C., would rise in phases and could eventually hold up to nine buildings. Riley Trettel, who leads SpaceX's energy and data center development, laid out the plan for residents and county officials, describing a campus built for speed and restraint in the same mold as its rapid Texas data center work.
A Phased, Grid-Friendly Build
The first phase would bring roughly 1.5 gigawatts online, with construction discussed for the spring of 2027. Rather than lean on a large on-site power plant, SpaceX said it would draw grid supply through the regional cooperatives SSVEC and AEPCO, reserving standby generators only for critical services. To make that work, the company pledged to fund about $3.6 billion in transmission and substation upgrades and then transfer those assets to the co-ops at no cost to their members.
Cooling is where the design leans hardest into restraint. SpaceX described a dry, closed-loop air-cooling system expected to consume just seven to ten acre-feet of water per year at full build-out — a rounding error next to the draw of conventional liquid-cooled campuses. That approach fits the company's pattern of engineering around scarce resources.
Jobs, Taxes and Lower Power Bills
For Cochise County, the pitch carries unusually direct benefits. SpaceX cited roughly 1,000 permanent jobs and 5,000 to 5,500 construction positions, alongside a headline investment figure of about $50 billion. The company also projected $34 million to $103 million a year in property taxes and a one-time sales tax contribution near $250 million.
The most striking claim is aimed squarely at ratepayers: SSVEC members could see residential bills fall by as much as 10 to 40 percent through rate credits or returned patronage capital, subject to a final Energy Services Agreement and approval by the Arizona Corporation Commission. It is a rare framing in which a hyperscale data center arrives as a tailwind for local utility customers rather than a strain on them, echoing the customer-first posture SpaceX has taken with its growing roster of AI compute tenants.
What Comes Next
A Special Use Authorization, filed as SU26-22, is still pending, and the county's Planning and Zoning Commission has set a public hearing for December 9. No final power or land agreements have been signed yet, and SpaceX was careful to frame the program as voluntary and still in review.
If approved, the Arizona campus would give SpaceX another vast reservoir of compute to pour into Starlink, Starship operations and the AI workloads now central to Musk's empire. More on the company's broader ambitions is posted at SpaceX's official site. For a desert county weighing its future, a six-gigawatt neighbor that promises cheaper electricity may prove hard to turn down.
