An investigative database of registered qualifying data centers under the Texas Comptroller's tax exemption program. Who owns them, who really occupies them, how much power they consume, and what communities are giving up to host them.
Texas offers a sales tax exemption on electricity, equipment, and other qualifying costs for registered "Large Data Center Projects" and "Qualifying Data Centers" under the Texas Comptroller's STAR program. The program was designed to attract cloud infrastructure investment. Instead it's become a tax shelter for an increasingly diverse set of operators — including cryptocurrency miners, foreign sovereign wealth vehicles, and companies whose beneficial owner is deliberately obscured behind a chain of LLCs.
This database tracks all 112 unique facilities registered as of early 2026 (114 Comptroller entries, including 2 expired+renewal pairs for Giga Texas and Hockley). The goal is to answer questions the Comptroller's registry doesn't: Who actually controls these facilities? How much power are they drawing from ERCOT? What water are they consuming in already water-stressed counties? What did local governments give away in additional abatements to land them?
This is an active investigation. 106 of 112 unique facility addresses have been confirmed at the street level — 5 remain at road or county level only (no street number), and 1 (Lancium Turkey 1) has no address on file with the Comptroller. FOIA requests are pending. If you have documents, tips, or corrections — especially on West Texas facilities and ERCOT curtailment agreements — reach out.
| Facility | Effective | Owner | Occupant | Operator | Location | Exemption Ends | Flags |
|---|
The Comptroller registry lists three separate entity roles for each data center: owner, occupant, and operator. When all three are the same company, the record is straightforward. When they differ — especially when the occupant is an LLC with no public footprint — it usually means the beneficial user is deliberately separated from the registered exemption holder. Below are the most significant discrepancies in the current dataset.
Texas Public Information Act (PIA) requests go to state agencies. ERCOT is a nonprofit subject to Texas Open Records. County appraisal districts are public agencies. Water districts vary. This is a working list — not all requests have been filed yet.
Request all registered qualifying data center exemptions statewide where the occupant is listed as "Design LLC," "Design, LLC," or any variant. Establishes the full Google shell entity footprint in Texas. We've confirmed 6 in this dataset — a statewide PIA would reveal if there are more.
Same as above for OBOE LLC. Confirms or refutes the Microsoft connection and establishes whether other music-named LLCs appear in the registry (e.g. Cello, Viola, Flute). One registration confirmed in Texas; national pattern suggests this is deliberate.
Four identical exemptions were registered in Oct 2025 under Green Chile Ventures LLC as occupant of DataBank's Red Oak facilities (DFW 9–12). No public end-user has been disclosed. Request all application materials, correspondence, and entity documentation submitted in connection with these four registrations.
Request all current Large Flexible Load (LFL) agreements with data center operators in Texas, including curtailment payments, enrolled capacity by facility, and any dispatch records from 2022–2025. Quantifies how much the state is paying crypto miners to stand down during grid stress events.
Request the current ERCOT large load interconnection queue filtered for data center applicants. Reveals facilities in the pipeline not yet in the Comptroller registry, and the scale of planned power consumption.
Request all water withdrawal permits associated with properties at or near major San Antonio data center addresses (Microsoft SAT cluster, CyrusOne, Vantage TX21/TX22). Establishes water consumption baseline for the state's largest data center cluster.
Request water withdrawal permits and usage records for Lancium Fort Stockton, Poolside Data Center, USBTC Pecos, Lonestar Taproot (Tarbush), Hackberry, and Cottonwood Data Centers. Multiple operations concentrated in an already water-stressed basin with no public disclosure requirement.
Request appraisal and exemption records for 300 Houston School Road and 481 Austin Blvd, Red Oak. Establishes whether local property tax abatements were layered on top of the state sales tax exemption for the Microsoft/Compass campus.
Request records showing whether facilities with confirmed expired exemption end dates — Microsoft NADC (expired 9/1/2023), Microsoft Corporation SAT original (expired 12/1/2023), Giga Texas (expired 4/9/2024), and Hockley Data Center (expired 8/19/2024) — renewed, received extensions, or continued operating under expired registrations.
Four facilities in Childress and Fisher Counties are owned and occupied by IE US Development Holdings and IE US Hardware entities — Spanish-registered subsidiaries operating at near-gigawatt scale. Request all permit, appraisal, and economic development records. Cross-reference with any local abatement agreements the county or city of Childress may have executed.
Request any economic development agreements, tax abatements, or incentive packages issued to Winner LLC, Ernst LLC, or Meta Platforms in connection with the 4500 Like Way facility. Exemption runs to 2035. Same structure used by Wurldwide LLC DBA Statue LLC in El Paso — request parallel records from City of El Paso.
Facilities that use behind-the-meter power generation must register as self-generators with the Texas PUC. These applications (public record) often contain physical facility addresses that operators simultaneously request be kept confidential by the Comptroller. HELO1 DC's confirmed address at 984 Co Rd 112, Afton was obtained this way (PUC Project No. 58470). Apply the same technique to Hackberry, Echo/King Mountain, Lancium Turkey 1, and other facilities with unresolved addresses.
Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) operates the Granbury Data Center at 8787 Wolf Hollow Ct, a behind-the-meter natural gas facility. Local residents have filed noise complaints. Request all permits, variances, noise ordinance complaints, and water usage records associated with the Wolf Hollow Ct property. Also request any economic development agreements between Hood County and Marathon Digital Holdings or predecessor USBTC entities.
Request all permit applications, appraisal records, and economic development agreements for 951 Co Rd 204, Colorado City (Cipher Barber Lake LLC). The Comptroller lists Anthropic as occupant, but Cipher Mining filings describe Fluidstack as primary leaseholder with Google as backstop. Mitchell County CAD records may clarify the actual operational structure and whether any local abatements were granted alongside the state exemption.
All facility data originates from the Texas Comptroller's STAR (Sales Tax And Revenue) database of registered qualifying data centers and large data center projects. The registry is public but not easily machine-readable — it was manually compiled from Comptroller records. Two facilities — Giga Texas (Tesla) and Hockley Data Center (SF HOUH LLC) — each have two registry entries: an expired registration immediately followed by a same-day renewal. The Comptroller retains both records. These are counted as 114 Comptroller registry entries but 112 unique facilities.
106 of 112 unique facilities have confirmed street-level addresses. Six remain unresolved or partial:
Address sources used for confirmed facilities:
Beneficial ownership was researched using Texas SOS filings, SEC EDGAR (for publicly traded operators), OpenCorporates, and published investigative reporting. Shell entity connections (Design LLC = Google, OBOE LLC = Microsoft, Winner/Ernst LLC = Meta, Wurldwide/Statue LLC = Meta) are based on cross-referencing with known entity structures from other states and published reporting. Green Chile Ventures LLC beneficial ownership remains unconfirmed.
This is a living document. If you have corrections, additional documentation, or information about facilities not yet in the database, please contact Subtxt Press directly. Entity relationships in particular are difficult to confirm from public records alone.
Texas HB 2 (2013) created the original data center exemption. HB 1750 (2023) extended it explicitly to cryptocurrency mining facilities. The exemption covers sales tax on electricity, cooling equipment, and qualified capital expenditures. There is no public disclosure requirement for power consumption or water use.
111 facilities mapped. Giga Texas and Hockley each have two registry entries (expired + renewal) mapped once each. Lancium Turkey 1 has no address on file and is not mapped.