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A major shift is beginning in Dickens County, with a highly touted cryptocurrency mining operation taking steps to become a more expansive data center. This start is marked with a recently announced agreement with CoreWeave, which is connected to artificial intelligence.
In 2022, Dickens County welcomed Argo Blockchain’s cryptocurrency facility, Helios. The operation was predicted to generate 25 Bitcoin per day and $900,000 in revenue, but was sold to Canada-based Galaxy Digital Holdings for $65 million after seven months. Galaxy held Argo’s promises to the community, including helping fund the reopening of Spur’s historic pool in 2024.
Galaxy will lease Helios to CoreWeave for 15 years. CoreWeave, backed by Nvidia, provides artificial intelligence hardware infrastructure needed by artificial intelligence companies.
The agreement will provide 133 megawatts of IT capacity to host CoreWeave’s graphics processing units (GPUs) for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) operations. CoreWeave will use approximately 200 megawatts of gross power capacity at the Helios facility.
“The long-term intent is to completely shift the Helios data center campus from supporting bitcoin mining operations to AI and HPC data center infrastructure,” a Galaxy spokesperson said. “Blockchain and crypto have already redefined financial systems, and AI is now set to reshape industries at an even greater scale. At Galaxy, we see these technologies converging—where decentralized networks, AI, and high-performance computing will create entirely new economic and technological paradigms. At the same time, we’re diversifying our business model and creating a significant and diversified source of stable revenue uncorrelated to the price of digital assets, allowing us to maximize cash flow and deliver the greatest value for our shareholders.”
Helios is already undergoing modifications. Galaxy confirmed the facility is having fiber connectivity and “specialized optical networking equipment” needed to improve bandwidth and latency requirements. Another modification is the “selective demolition of the existing 126,000-square-foot data center shell and other infrastructure.”
When the facility opened in 2022, Dickens County Judge Kevin Brendle told the Avalanche-Journal he was eager for the hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure translating to millions of dollars of tax revenue over the next five years that will go into their school systems and county budgets.
“The impact to our community is better jobs with benefits, insurance, retirement, vacation. It will be a tax boon for our school districts and the county,” he said at the time.
What is in the future for the deal with Helios and Dickens County? Galaxy expects expansion in company and community.
With this, Galaxy expects to generate approximately $4.5 billion in total revenue, according to a company spokesperson. CoreWeave also has exclusivity to further agreements for access to another 400 megawatts of IT load, totaling 600 megawatts of power capacity at Helios.
Helios has 800 megawatts of capacity approved, and Galaxy has “an incremental 1.7 gigawatts of power capacity currently under various stages of load study,” according to the spokesperson. This in turn will allow Galaxy to support more artificial intelligence and high-performance computing data centers in the Panhandle-Plains region of West Texas.
As for Dickens County, Galaxy maintains it will continue long-term support of the community.
“This announcement further commits Galaxy to long-term growth in Dickens and surrounding counties and enables us to continue to create jobs and improve infrastructure across the region,” the spokesperson said. “This is an exciting deal not only for Galaxy and CoreWeave, but also for the entire Dickens County community. We believe that our combined presence in Dickens County will help catalyze long-term job and economic growth and position the region as the energy hub of the United States.”
Alana Edgin writes about business for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Got a news tip? Contact her via email at aedgin@lubbockonline.com.