Ionic, Nscale Deal Highlights AI Growth as Texas Data Center Boom Accelerates

October 15, 2025 – A major lease agreement between Ionic Digital and Nscale is boosting Texas’s rising role in AI and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure. Under a contract announced in mid-October 2025, Nscale will lease the full 234-megawatt capacity of Ionic Digital’s Cedarvale facility in Ward County. The agreement is a 10-year, triple-net lease valued at about $2 billion, giving Ionic steady revenue while allowing it to monetize existing infrastructure rather than relying solely on Bitcoin mining.

Under the deal, Nscale will deploy approximately 104,000 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs to support Microsoft’s AI services. The site’s power load is expected to expand over time, with options for adding more capacity.

Wider Data Center Trend in Texas

This deal is only one example of rapidly growing data center investment across Texas. A few other recent highlights:

• In Shackleford County, Vantage Data Centers is planning a massive new AI-campus (called “Frontier”) spanning roughly 1,200 acres with a projected 1.4 gigawatt capacity.
• In San Antonio, Vantage is also building several large data centers on the city’s far West Side — a 432,800 sq. ft. facility planned for 96 MW capacity is expected to break ground in October 2025 and be completed by mid-2027.
• In Ector County (in the Permian Basin), the joint venture Texas Critical Data Centers (TCDC), led by New Era Energy & Digital and Sharon AI, is advancing a 250 MW AI/HPC campus, including infrastructure engineering, land acquisition, and behind-the-meter power planning.

Behind-the-meter (BTM) power planning involves designing and implementing on-site energy systems, such as solar panels, battery storage, or microgrids, to power a facility directly. This type of planning aims to reduce energy costs, improve reliability during outages, and increase energy independence by minimizing reliance on the traditional electric grid. Effective BTM planning includes assessing factors like available space, site conditions, local utility rate structures, and integrating these systems with an energy management system for optimization. 

Implications and Challenges

With all this growth, Texas’s power grid and regulatory framework are coming under increased scrutiny. For example, ERCOT projects that peak electricity demand could approach 218 gigawatts by 2031, driven in large part by data centers among other large-load users.

There’s also growing conversation around sustainability: energy sourcing, cooling systems, and environmental permitting are rising in importance. Some companies are pursuing onsite power, behind-the-meter generation, and streamlined permits.

Texas is clearly in the center of a major shift toward AI infrastructure and data center expansion. The Ionic/Nscale lease is a signal that infrastructure owners are rethinking business models (from crypto mining to AI hosting), while broader projects indicate Texas will increasingly see compute power and energy demand rise—along with the challenge of balancing economic potential with sustainable practices.