ServerDomes Breaks Ground on $10 Billion, 350MW Domed Campus in Texas

Construction has started on a $10 billion, 350MW data center campus outside El Paso, Texas, featuring up to ten domed buildings across roughly 700 acres of the 2,000-acre Hueco Ranch site in Hudspeth County's Desert Haven area.

ServerDome Global, the developer behind the project, will power the campus with a behind-the-meter gas solution, with some reports indicating additional geothermal generating capacity on site. Phase one already has tenants secured, and the site will use a closed-loop cooling system to cut water consumption — a critical consideration in the Chihuahuan Desert.

Kaufman & Company, a private investment and holding firm founded in 2020 by Daniel Kaufman and backed by the Kaufman family office, is working with ServerDomes on the Texas development. Lonestar Kaufman, a real estate investment firm founded in 2022, holds a joint-venture role with ServerDomes Global on AI infrastructure projects in Texas and Utah.

In plain terms: a ten-dome, gas-and-geothermal-powered campus is now under construction in West Texas.

What Makes the Dome Design Different?

ServerDomes' core product is a prefabricated geodesic dome shell measuring 600ft × 300ft, which the company says can be delivered in as little as 12 months — a fraction of conventional data center build times. Each dome supports roughly 20MW of IT load.

The design originated at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), which built a domed data center in Hillsboro, Oregon, in 2014. That facility used an aluminum geodesic shell and natural convection to cool servers without air conditioning units, exhaust fans, dehumidifiers, chillers, or CRACs. The company spun out of OHSU and formally launched its geodesic design in 2017.

The structure pulls air in through intakes near the base and exhausts it through vents at the top, with an airfoil improving airflow — an approach comparable to Yahoo's "chicken coop" design. A vegetative bio-swale surrounding each facility supplies additional cooling and air. The current iteration supports both air and liquid cooling at densities up to 250kW per rack.

How Did the Project Become Public?

Hudspeth County Judge Joanna E. MacKenzie published an open letter earlier this month confirming that a developer was evaluating the area. ServerDome Global CEO David J Keegan subsequently apologized to local residents and officials for the lack of advance notice about the development.

Daniel Kaufman addressed the rationale in a July announcement: "The issues of power, water, appearance, and jobs are real, impactful concerns, and we were seeing them in our own projects and across the industry."

He added: "The geometry is what makes this exciting. It is a dome with a green roof that blends into the landscape rather than another lit box stretching for miles."

Where Else Is ServerDomes Building?

The company's pipeline extends well beyond Texas:

• Port Mackenzie, Alaska; Prairie County, Montana; Mesa, Arizona; Mona, Utah; and Saudi Arabia, per its website
• Wharton, Texas, outside Houston, named by CEO Keegan as a target
• Granite Fortress in Juab County, near Salt Lake City, where groundbreaking occurred per a July press release; that site will use rooftop solar and involves Data Center Power Company, but will reportedly not use the dome design
• Mexico, under a deal with local investor Fermaca Infraestructura, though it remains unclear whether any capacity was deployed

Kaufman & Company says it is pursuing domed campuses in Louisiana, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and South Dakota, plus international markets in India, Europe, and Canada.

ServerDomes also partnered last year with Global Green Generation, an engineering and construction management firm, to deliver its dome facilities.

In short: one dome design, one investor family, and a growing list of sites from Utah to Saudi Arabia.