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Issue 101: SpaceX Plans $24 Billion Gas Plant and Data Centre Outside a Texas Moratorium

Movie-poster art for Issue 101: High Moratorium

Permanent copy of issue 101. Today's issue is always the front page.

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SpaceX plans to build a $24 billion gas-fired power plant and super-compute facility on land outside Brownsville, Texas, that the city released from its limits this summer, placing the project beyond a 90-day data centre moratorium that took effect last week. CoreWeave reported third-quarter revenue of $3.66 billion, up 168%, raised its 2026 forecast and lifted the floor of its spending plan to $37 billion, while its net loss widened to $709 million on $846 million of interest expense. AMD began shipping sixth-generation Epyc server chips aimed at AI agents, Firmus defended diesel backup at its Tasmanian campuses before a parliamentary inquiry, and Kora unveiled a Linux desktop, built with Qualcomm, that runs models on the user's own PC by default.

Date: 2026-11-11
Updated: 2026-11-11 06:30
Status: LIVE


Broadcast

When towns pause data centres, the largest builders move past the town line and bring their own power. SpaceX's Starbase plan pairs a computing campus with a gas plant, so it need not wait for Texas grid connections, which the governor paused in August. CoreWeave showed the other cost of the central build: revenue grew faster than analysts forecast, yet interest consumed nearly a quarter of it. AMD's new server chips and the Firmus diesel dispute show the bill spreading to processors and backup fuel. Kora's Linux desktop, which keeps models and memory on the user's own machine, is the counter-offer, but it will not reach buyers until 2027.

Watch


Stories

SpaceX plans a $24 billion gas-fired power plant and data centre outside Brownsville's moratorium

The city of Starbase gave public notice on Monday that SpaceX will build a $24 billion gas-fired power plant and super-compute facility on 444 acres that Brownsville de-annexed at the company's request this summer, the Texas Tribune reported. Brownsville's 90-day data centre moratorium took effect last week, and Starbase commissioners will hear a tax abatement request in December.
-- By generating its own power, SpaceX can build at hyperscale while Texas pauses grid connections and towns pause permits, which shows moratoriums pushing the largest clusters off the grid rather than stopping them.
2026-11-10 / The Texas Tribune / energy, chip / central / #spacex-plans-a-24-billion-gas-fired-power-plant-

CoreWeave raises its 2026 revenue forecast as interest costs climb to $846 million a quarter

CoreWeave said on Tuesday that third-quarter revenue rose 168% to $3.66 billion and its backlog reached $132.5 billion, and it raised its 2026 revenue forecast to $13.0 billion to $13.3 billion. It also lifted the low end of its capital spending plan to $37 billion to $39 billion, while its net loss widened to $709 million on $846 million of interest expense.
-- The largest independent AI cloud is growing faster than forecast, but interest now consumes nearly a quarter of its revenue, so the rent on central compute depends on credit markets staying open.
2026-11-10 / CoreWeave / chip / central / #coreweave-raises-its-2026-revenue-forecast-as-in

AMD begins shipping sixth-generation Epyc server chips built to run AI agents

AMD said on Tuesday that servers using its 6th Gen Epyc SP7 processors, with up to 256 Zen 6 cores, are shipping from major hardware makers, with Microsoft Azure and Oracle cloud instances to follow and Meta validating them as a lead customer. AMD claims its top chip delivers up to 3.7 times the performance of a system using Nvidia's Vera CPU, a vendor figure based partly on AMD's own estimates.
-- AI agents need racks of ordinary processors to direct the GPUs, so the data centre bill now grows on the CPU side as well, and AMD's pitch is more agents inside the same power envelope.
2026-11-10 / AMD / chip / central / #amd-begins-shipping-sixth-generation-epyc-server

Firmus defends diesel backup at its Tasmanian AI data centres before a parliamentary inquiry

Firmus Technologies told a Tasmanian parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday that it would run diesel generators only in emergencies, even as it appeals a council condition limiting the 276 backup generators at its Long Reach site to emergencies, maintenance and testing, ABC News reported. Tasmania's Environment Protection Authority has sought to join the appeal, saying it would have assessed the project differently had it known the generators might run whenever commercially convenient.
-- Backup generators that run during periods of energy market stress would turn an AI campus into a private peaking plant, and regulators are now asking who decides when that is allowed.
2026-11-10 / ABC News (Australia) / energy / central / #firmus-defends-diesel-backup-at-its-tasmanian-ai

Kora unveils a Linux desktop that runs AI models on the user's own PC

Kora Systems unveiled a Linux-based operating system on Tuesday whose inference engine pools a PC's processor, graphics chip and neural unit to run models locally by default, calling frontier models only for heavier jobs, SiliconANGLE reported. Qualcomm, which worked on the project for close to a year, says Snapdragon X2 Elite machines can run a 26-billion-parameter language model on the device; the first PCs ship in 2027.
-- An operating system that keeps memory and context on the desk and rents the cloud only for heavy work builds the local half of the bargain into the software itself, though nothing ships until 2027.
2026-11-10 / SiliconANGLE / efficiency / local / #kora-unveils-a-linux-desktop-that-runs-ai-models


Axis
local [#########################-----] central
Score: 82   clusters still winning   +1
SpaceX planned a $24 billion gas plant and data centre outside Brownsville's moratorium, CoreWeave raised its forecast and its spending floor to $37 billion, AMD began shipping Epyc chips for AI agents, Firmus defended diesel backup in Tasmania, and Kora unveiled a Linux desktop that runs models locally. The score rises one point to 82.

Forces

ForceMeterScorePullNote
CHIP / CAPEX
..
97 central CoreWeave lifted the floor of its 2026 capital spending plan to $37 billion to $39 billion after spending $14.5 billion in the third quarter, and AMD began shipping 6th Gen Epyc processors with up to 256 cores for the CPU side of AI agent racks. The gauge rises one point to 97.
ENERGY
..
96 central SpaceX's $24 billion Starbase plan pairs a super-compute facility with its own gas-fired power plant, outside Brownsville's moratorium and Texas's paused grid queue, while Firmus is appealing a Tasmanian limit on running the 276 diesel generators at its Long Reach site. The gauge rises one point to 96.
EFFICIENCY
..
85 local Kora and Qualcomm say Snapdragon X2 Elite PCs running Kora's Linux system can run a 26-billion-parameter language model on the device, calling frontier models only for heavier work; the first machines ship in 2027. The gauge holds at 85.

Line charts (0=local 100=central 2026-10-27 to 2026-11-11)

Axis score line chart

Forces line chart

Market overlay (2026-10-13 to 2026-11-11)

Latest: BTC $73,959 / hashrate ~962.64 EH/s / token markers avg $5.2583/M / axis 82. These lines are different units. We compare timing, not dollars-to-hashrate.

Market overlay line chart

Not shown: GPU cloud $/hour, hub electricity, miner hashprice, or lab cost per token -- none of those are a clean public feed.

Power and list prices
BTC $73,959 / hashrate ~963 EH/s. List-price gap (not a subsidy %): 123.1x list gap (blended) Mercury 3 -> Claude Fable 5.1 ($0.16/M to $20.00/M). (mempool.space + Coinbase/CoinGecko)

Marker prices (USD per 1M tokens; verified 2026-11-06; blended = (3*input + 1*output) / 4; -- = open/self-host or no single public list)

#ModelOrgCCWeightsTierInOutBlend
1 Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic US closed
undisclosed
workhorse $2.00 $10.00 $4.00
2 GPT-5.5 OpenAI US closed
undisclosed
flagship $5.00 $30.00 $11.25
3 DeepSeek V4.1 Flash DeepSeek CN open
~284B total / ~13B active (MoE)
commodity $0.30 $1.20 $0.53

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