EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Mexico has joined the race towards a digital economy by green-lighting construction of a U.S. tech company’s $4.8 billion data center in the state of Queretaro.
CloudHQ Chief Operating Officer Keith Harney on Thursday unveiled plans in Mexico City for the 130-acre campus near Queretaro International Airport.
The company plans construction of six large buildings to be leased to major tech companies and a power plant to supply at some of the 200 megawatts to 900 megawatts of electricity those tenants will need.
The construction phase will create 7,200 jobs; once in operation in 2027, the campus will need 900 highly skilled professionals, in addition to however many employees each tenant hires, Harney said.
“We pay cost, we rent space to customers, customers invest in the property. It’s three to five times the cost of our buildings to accommodate cloud computing or AI (artificial intelligence)” operations, Harney said on Thursday. “It’s a job creation multiplier and it’s not uncommon that for every permanent job there is a multiplier of three (positions) to support what is happening on campus.”
An AI data center uses cutting-edge technology to process vast amounts of data on a continuous basis for business needs or specialized applications, such as programs that run internet search engines, autonomous vehicles, image recognition, translation platforms and healthcare diagnostics, among others.
Mega data center operations are getting off the ground on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Last week, Doña Ana County, New Mexico, gave its nod to tax incentives for Project Jupiter, a $165 billion AI data center proposed in Santa Teresa, across the state line from El Paso, Texas.
In Abilene, Texas, OpenAI and Oracle are among the companies developing the $500 billion Stargate AI Infrastructure project. It’s first data center opened this week.
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