A data center startup co-founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is hitching its growth plans to one of Texas’ oldest — and increasingly valuable — landowners, betting that cheap power and vast acreage in the Permian Basin can anchor the next wave of AI infrastructure.
Bolt Data & Energy announced it raised $150 million in capital and struck a partnership with Texas Pacific Land Corporation, which is investing another $50 million into the venture, according to a joint press release Wednesday. The tie-up positions Bolt Data to develop large-scale data centers on Texas Pacific’s sprawling West Texas holdings, as demand for energy-hungry AI computers accelerates, Bloomberg reported.
TPL will receive an equity stake, warrants and a right of first refusal to supply water to Bolt-affiliated projects and related infrastructure. Bolt, meanwhile, is lining up commercial partners and anchor tenants to build massive data hubs on TPL-controlled land, according to the release.
The deal adds a new chapter to Texas Pacific Land’s unlikely transformation from a Wild West-era land trust into a Wall Street darling riding the AI boom. Founded more than a century ago, the Dallas-based company owns roughly 882,000 acres, most of it in the oil-rich Permian Basin, and has seen its stock more than triple this year, pushing its market value to nearly $40 billion, the release shows.
Bolt is pitching itself as a faster, vertically integrated alternative to traditional data center developers. The company plans to focus not just on building server farms, but also on securing power generation — from natural gas and renewables initially, with nuclear on the longer-term roadmap — to shorten the gap between demand and delivery of data at scale, according to the statement.
For real estate and infrastructure players, West Texas is emerging as a compelling data center market. Natural gas prices in the Permian are among the cheapest in the country, land is abundant and regulatory hurdles are lighter than in coastal markets. Those advantages have already drawn interest from hyperscalers like Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon, all of which are hunting for reliable, low-cost electricity to feed AI workloads.
TPL’s business model may make it a particularly attractive partner. While it doesn’t drill for oil or gas itself, the company monetizes its land through royalties, surface leases, easements and permits tied to pipelines, power lines, utilities and industrial uses. Data centers slot neatly into that, offering long-term leases and infrastructure revenue without the commodity risk of energy production, according to the publication.
The partnership is the latest in a sprint of multiple players through the state. Open AI’s Stargate push, Nvidia, Fermi and others are plotting data centers in West Texas and elsewhere across Texas. The combined construction budget for new data centers in Texas exceeds $1.4 billion just for December, according to Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation filings, over 40 percent of the total $3.4 billion cost of new data center construction projects registered in 2025.
— Eric Weilbacher
Read more
Holiday splurge: Google, Facebook to spend $1.4B on Texas data center construction this month
Abbott opens arms to data centers, teases big AI investment
Data center boom hits both ends of Texas’ tech corridor
Nvidia-backed firms plan massive West Texas AI data center
