SpaceX wants to build and operate a 747-acre data center campus near the Willcox Playa in Cochise County, Arizona, demanding more than 6 gigawatts of power when completed, the Arizona Daily Star reported, citing reporting by The Arizona Republic. The company outlined the plan for nearly 300 people at a community meeting on Nov. 4, and the county’s Planning and Zoning Division will hold a public hearing on the project on Dec. 9, the report says.
By our arithmetic, more than 6,000 megawatts of demand against some 1,000 permanent jobs works out to about 6 megawatts of power per job.
Business Pill · Grid Cost Allocation
A short Business Engineer explainer on how grid costs are allocated. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss this project.
The key insight: SpaceX outlined a 747-acre data center campus near the Willcox Playa in Cochise County that would demand more than 6 gigawatts of power when completed, the Arizona Daily Star reported. The county’s Planning and Zoning Division holds a public hearing on Dec. 9, the same date the City of Starbase, Texas, commission considers a tax abatement for SpaceX’s other supercomputer campus.
Cochise County Development Services received an application for a special use authorization permit on Oct. 30 from Tombstone Resources LLC, which later announced SpaceX as the host of the town hall, according to the report. The Willcox Playa is about 80 miles east of Tucson.
According to the permit application, the campus would be “dry-cooled” and pump no groundwater for industrial use, with an existing well pumping up to 10 acre-feet of water a year for potable use, maintenance and equipment cleaning, the report says. Electricity would come through the Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative and Arizona Electric Power Cooperative, and the project would invest $3.6 billion in grid upgrades, the application said.
Riley Trettle, SpaceX’s head of energy and supercomputer department, said at the presentation that the project would reduce residents’ electricity bills, lower property taxes by 20% and create some 1,000 permanent jobs, the report says. The application cites a one-time $250 million sales tax benefit to the county and some $35 million to $103 million in sales tax revenue.
Campus land area of two SpaceX supercomputer projects that are both on local agendas on Dec. 9, 2026. Arizona: 747 acres near the Willcox Playa, more than 6 gigawatts of power demand when completed and some 1,000 permanent jobs, per the Arizona Daily Star citing the permit application and SpaceX’s presentation. Texas: about 444 acres, about $24 billion for initial phases, per a City of Starbase notice we reported earlier. About 6 MW per job is our arithmetic.
Scale and Opposition
The planned supercomputing facility would demand about 2.5 times more power than all data centers in Maricopa County combined, if fully built out, according to a power use analysis by The Arizona Republic cited in the report.
Many in the auditorium held “No Data Center” signs, and a 2,400-signature petition asks the county zoning commission and board of supervisors to deny the permit, according to the report. Some attendees opposed the project over groundwater, while others cited the jobs and tax revenue, the report says. SpaceX employees and representatives declined to answer questions from The Republic and other media, it adds.
Connecting the Coverage
The Arizona hearing falls on the same date as the City of Starbase, Texas, commission meeting on a tax abatement for SpaceX’s gas-fired power plant and super-compute facility, which a city notice puts at about $24 billion for initial phases on about 444 acres, as we reported in Starbase Notice Puts $24B on SpaceX Gas Plant, Supercomputer. In Texas, Hinojosa has called for a pause on data centers and questioned SpaceX’s state incentives, as covered in Hinojosa: Texas Must Pause Data Centers, Musk on Her Terms.
As we read the report, the Arizona figures come from two places: the permit application (dry cooling, the well, $3.6 billion in grid upgrades and the sales tax figures) and SpaceX’s presentation (bills, a 20% property tax cut and some 1,000 jobs).
As we read the numbers, more than 6,000 megawatts against some 1,000 permanent jobs is about 6 megawatts of power demand per job, by our arithmetic.
As we read the coverage, SpaceX now has two supercomputer campuses on local agendas on the same date, one in Arizona and one at Starbase, Texas.
The Arizona Daily Star, reporting by The Arizona Republic, 8 November 2026
“demanding more than 6 gigawatts of power when completed”
Three Implications
FOR COCHISE COUNTY The Planning and Zoning Division will hold a public hearing on the project on Dec. 9, and a 2,400-signature petition asks the county to deny the permit, the report says.
FOR GRID PLANNING The application says the project would invest $3.6 billion in grid upgrades, with power through the Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative and Arizona Electric Power Cooperative, the report says.
FOR WATER The application says the campus would be dry-cooled and pump no groundwater for industrial use, with up to 10 acre-feet a year from an existing well for potable use, maintenance and cleaning, the report says.
The analysis says: “The job of any operator, investor, or builder is to know which layer they are operating inside and which layer the binding constraint is rotating toward next.”
As we read it, the Cochise County hearing is a local example of the power and land layer that the essay describes. The analysis does not discuss SpaceX or Arizona.
What Is Not Established
The report does not give a capital investment figure for the Arizona campus in the passages we read, a construction timeline, or the computing hardware planned. SpaceX representatives declined media questions, so the figures come from the permit application and the presentation as the report describes them. The report describes the Dec. 9 hearing as the next step and reports no county decision on the permit.
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SpaceX outlined a 747-acre data center campus near the Willcox Playa that would demand more than 6 gigawatts when completed, with a Cochise County public hearing on Dec. 9, the Arizona Daily Star reported. SpaceX said the project would create some 1,000 permanent jobs, about 6 megawatts per job by our arithmetic.
A note on sourcing. Figures and quotations about the Arizona project are from the Arizona Daily Star’s report “SpaceX proposes massive data center in Southern Arizona” (reporting by The Arizona Republic), read on 8 November 2026; we did not read the permit application itself or contact SpaceX. Figures about Starbase come from our earlier piece on the City of Starbase notice. About 6 megawatts per job is our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
