Nvidia doesn’t just want to sell the chips powering the biggest AI data center project in the country. It wants to own a piece of the electricity keeping them cool.
The chipmaker, along with a consortium of other tech companies, is in advanced discussions to acquire a minority stake in Lancium, the Texas-based power infrastructure developer responsible for energizing OpenAI and Oracle’s Stargate campus in Abilene. The deal would value Lancium somewhere between $7 billion and $10 billion, with some estimates stretching as high as $14 billion.
From Bitcoin miner to AI power broker
Founded in late 2017, the firm originally built its business around flexible Bitcoin mining loads paired with renewable energy in Texas. The idea was elegant. Use cheap, surplus renewable power for mining, then curtail operations when the grid needed that energy back.
Lancium developed what it calls “Smart Response” technology for power management, essentially a system that lets data centers play nice with electrical grids by flexing their consumption up and down based on availability.
