Tract Buys 1,500 Acres for Data Center Near Austin

Texas just edged up in the race to AI infrastructure supremacy, with two deals highlighting the state’s growing attraction to computing and cloud infrastructure firms.

Denver-based developer Tract acquired more than 1,500 acres in Caldwell County, about 30 miles south of Austin, with plans for a data center campus, the Austin Business Journal reported.

The property, previously eyed by Micron Technologies for a semiconductor plant, lies partly within the extraterritorial jurisdictions of Lockhart and Uhland. Tract has not requested local incentives, but it has been working to amend existing development agreements.

The project scope has yet to be finalized, but Tract is known for large-scale, master-planned data center campuses.

The firm has raised $1.7 billion from investors and amassed over 23,000 acres across 10 markets. Its past projects include a $20 billion data center complex in Phoenix and major sites in Virginia, Nevada and Utah. Tract typically targets hyperscale cloud providers like Microsoft and Meta or wholesale operators such as QTS and Compass Datacenters.

Meanwhile, in North Texas, cloud computing startup Lambda, backed by AI chip giant Nvidia took a lease at a $700 million data center under construction in Plano.

Lambda is partnering with Aligned Data Centers to occupy the 425,000-square-foot DFW-04 data center facility at 601 North Star Road, the Dallas Morning News reported. The facility broke ground last year and is expected to deliver in 2026. Lambda raised $480 million earlier this year in a funding round that included Nvidia.

Lambda’s presence adds to Dallas-Fort Worth’s prominence as a data infrastructure leader, with 1.4 gigawatts of operational capacity and another 500 megawatts under development, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Aligned Data Centers is also building a facility with its own power substation in Mansfield.

— Judah Duke