Google Commits $17 Billion to First Wyoming Data Center Near Cheyenne

Google on Nov. 5 announced its first Google Wyoming data center, a long-term $17 billion investment in Laramie County near Cheyenne. The company said the campus will run on a contracted 702-megawatt fuel-cell project with carbon capture, pay for 100% of the power it uses, and use air cooling to limit local water demand.

Sources: Google blog (Nov. 5, 2026); Data Center Dynamics; WyoFile. Acreage and 2031 completion from DCD citing local filings; Google did not put a full buildout calendar in its announcement.

Partners, power and carbon capture

In a company blog post by Steve Walter, Google’s vice president of global infrastructure and energy, Google said it is partnering with Tallgrass Energy, Black Hills Energy, American Electric Power (AEP) and Related Digital on the Cowboy State campus. Google framed the project as its first data center in Wyoming and said it will “pay for 100% of the power we use” and cover infrastructure needs driven by its growth.

The headline power deal is a commercial-scale, 702 MW fuel-cell development with carbon capture and storage under contract with AEP — described by Google as the largest planned development of its kind to date. Bloom Energy will manufacture the solid oxide fuel cells in the United States; AEP will own and operate them, according to Data Center Dynamics. Captured carbon is slated for permanent geologic storage at Tallgrass’s Eastern Wyoming Sequestration Hub. Google said the Wyoming deal lifts its total contracted CCS capacity to nearly 1 gigawatt when combined with a U.S. CCS project announced last fall.

Google also said it will offtake power from gas generators run by Tallgrass and Black Hills Energy and is running a front-end engineering and design study on fitting Tallgrass combined-cycle turbines with CCS. The data halls themselves will be air-cooled, Google said, “to minimize strain on local water resources.”

By the numbers: investment scale in context

Google’s $17 billion long-term figure sits alongside other large compute deals that have already drawn Boston Report coverage. Separately this week, Google’s credit backstop for TeraWulf debt tied to Anthropic’s roughly $19 billion Kentucky data center lease underscored how capital-heavy AI infrastructure has become — even when the ownership and lease structures differ from a Google-owned Wyoming campus. In Cheyenne itself, Data Center Dynamics noted that Related Digital broke ground in October 2025 on a $1.2 billion data center project for CoreWeave, illustrating a local pipeline that already includes Microsoft and Meta campuses.

Percentages and rankings below are TBR calculations from the cited dollar figures only (Google Wyoming $17B ÷ TeraWulf/Anthropic Kentucky lease $19B ≈ 89%; Related Digital Cheyenne $1.2B is about 7% of Google’s stated Wyoming commitment).

Data Center Dynamics, citing local planning materials, placed the campus on a 716-acre parcel about eight miles south of Cheyenne in the Switchgrass Industrial Park, with four data halls plus office, logistics and network buildings and construction targeted for completion by 2031. Earlier reporting had put potential campus power in the multi-gigawatt range; Google’s Nov. 5 post did not disclose a total IT load figure. WyoFile located the buildout near Terry Ranch Road and reported that Tallgrass is already preparing a one-square-mile area for a first phase.

Cheyenne’s crowded data-center map

Southeast Wyoming already hosts a dense cluster of large compute projects. WyoFile reported that the Cheyenne area has about 10 data centers in operation and more than a dozen more on the planning books. Data Center Dynamics noted Microsoft broke ground in Cheyenne in August 2025 and has sought thousands of additional acres, while Meta also operates a large campus nearby. Google’s move replaces an earlier Crusoe-led effort known locally as Project Jade; DCD said Crusoe paused work in June “at the request of our customer,” and local reports identified Google subsidiary Jupiter Star Holdings, LLC, as the successor developer.

Local reaction mixed confirmation with fatigue. Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins told WyoFile he had spoken with Google for at least a year and that “this is not speculative. This is happening,” adding that Tallgrass “have spent millions of dollars already, and Google will break ground here soon.” City Councilman Larry Wolfe told WyoFile that repeated multi-billion-dollar announcements have made residents “really cynical about projects that aren’t of that magnitude.” Google said it recently hosted a downtown Cheyenne community meeting with more than 200 Laramie County residents and is standing up a Community Council with its energy and development partners.

The politics are sharper statewide. WyoFile noted that Secretary of State and soon-to-be Congressman Chuck Gray has opposed new AI data centers in Wyoming, and that a University of Wyoming poll published last week found only 30% of residents supported allowing construction of more large AI data centers. That local skepticism tracks a national pattern The Boston Report has covered after voters rejected most 2026 data-center ballot measures and after companies including OpenAI published community and ratepayer pledges.

What Google says residents will get

Google said it expects the project to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in local property taxes for Laramie County and School District 1, and that community investment plans will focus on K-12 education, workforce development and skilled trades. The company said it has already hosted a Community Day at the Cheyenne Children’s Museum and plans further partnership announcements. Google did not publish a construction start date or a year-by-year spend schedule in the Nov. 5 blog post; WyoFile reported those timelines were still unclear at press time.

For Google’s broader AI stack, the Wyoming campus adds physical capacity behind products the company is already shipping — including recent model and video updates such as Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash — while the firm separately deepens financing ties to third-party campuses, as in the TeraWulf–Anthropic Kentucky lease backstop. Whether air cooling, CCS and a full-freight power pledge quiet Laramie County concerns will depend on permitting, tax schedules and the Community Council’s first public work products — none of which were detailed as binding statutes in Thursday’s announcement.

Sources

• Google — Investing in Wyoming’s infrastructure, energy and workforce (Nov. 5, 2026)
• WyoFile — Google commits to spending $17B on AI data centers in Wyoming (Nov. 5, 2026)
• Data Center Dynamics — Google announces $17bn data center campus in Cheyenne, Wyoming (Nov. 6, 2026)