ECL, a Silicon Valley start-up led by Yuval Bachar, unveiled plans to construct the world’s first fully sustainable 1-gigawatt (GW) AI factory data center, TerraSite-TX1, located on a 600+ acre (243 hectares) site near Houston, Texas.
The project, which will cost around $8 billion, includes Lambda as its first tenant. The first phase, expected to be completed by mid-2025 at a cost of $450 million, will provide 50 MW of data center capacity to cloud and AI operators. Powered entirely by hydrogen, the data center will run off-grid, avoiding the strain on Texas’ power grid while eliminating carbon emissions. The site may expand to 2GW based on demand.
Bachar previously served as Principal Engineer leading LinkedIn’s global data center infrastructure and was instrumental in the Open19 initiative, an open hardware platform for data center innovation. The ECL team also includes co-founder Rajesh Gopinath, formerly of Bloom Energy (fuel cells).
ECL’s data center aims to address the increasing energy demands of AI while mitigating environmental impact. The facility will feature advanced modular designs for fast scalability, with expansions possible in 1 MW increments. It also incorporates ECL’s Lightning™ AI management system, which enables real-time monitoring and adjustments for power efficiency and cooling, critical for handling high-density AI workloads. The hydrogen-powered cooling system uses water from the energy generation process, ensuring a sustainable water footprint.
The Houston area is rapidly advancing in hydrogen production, with several significant projects underway. The U.S. Department of Energy has designated Houston as one of seven regional clean hydrogen hubs, awarding up to $1.2 billion in funding for the HyVelocity Hydrogen Hub, which aims to leverage the region’s extensive infrastructure and skilled workforce to produce low-carbon hydrogen from both natural gas and renewable sources. Notably, ExxonMobil is leading a multi-billion billion project in Baytown, Texas focused on hydrogen production with carbon capture and storage, while HIF Global plans a massive renewable hydrogen facility in Matagorda County.
Lambda, which has raised several hundred millions of dollars in venture funding, is a GPU cloud company powered by NVIDIA chips.
Founded in 2012, Lambda brings over a decade of experience in building AI infrastructure at scale. With over 100,000 customer sign-ups on Lambda Cloud, the company has established itself as an early provider of NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs, attracting AI developers seeking rapid access to the latest architectures for various AI tasks, including training, fine-tuning, and inferencing of generative AI, large language models, and foundation models.
Highlights
• World’s first off-grid, 1GW hydrogen-powered AI data center
• 600+ acre (243 hectares) site in Texas
• $8B project cost, with $450M for phase one by 2025
• 50MW initial capacity, scalable up to 2GW
• Designed to reduce the environmental footprint of AI operations
• Powered by three hydrogen pipelines converging at the site
“While others talk about delivering off-grid, hydrogen-powered data centers in five, ten, or 20 years, only ECL is giving the AI industry the space, power, and peace of mind they and their customers need, now,” said Yuval Bachar, co-founder and CEO of ECL. “The level of innovation that we have introduced to the market is unprecedented and will serve not only us and our customers but the entire data center industry for decades to come.”
“The data center technology committed to by ECL is truly transformative in the industry,” said Ken Patchett, VP Data Center Infrastructure, Lambda. “We believe ECL’s technology could unlock a powerful and eco-conscious foundation for AI advancement. This new infrastructure could give researchers and developers essential computational resources while drastically reducing the environmental impact of AI operations.”
Interview Highlights:
• ECL aims to provide next-generation sustainable data centers powered by off-grid microgrid systems based on hydrogen fuel cells.
• ECL’s primary power source is hydrogen, delivered in either liquid or gaseous form, depending on the site.
• ECL’s data centers produce zero emissions and are water-positive, often contributing excess water back to the community.
• ECL eliminates diesel generators and UPS systems from its data centers, offering a cleaner energy solution.
• ECL’s cooling systems can currently support 75kW per rack and will reach 125kW per rack in the near future, addressing AI-driven demands.
• ECL’s data centers are modular, built in 1-megawatt blocks that can be scaled up to accommodate larger needs.
• The solution can scale from small sites of 7-10 megawatts to larger ones by repeating the 1-megawatt block structure.
• ECL’s cost to build is significantly lower than the average data center in the U.S. and worldwide, making it competitive.
• ECL’s total cost of ownership (TCO) is highly competitive, especially when connected to hydrogen pipelines.
• Hydrogen prices for ECL’s energy range from 5 to 12 cents per kWh when connected to a hydrogen pipeline, and 30 to 45 cents with delivered hydrogen.
• There are about 1,600 miles of hydrogen pipelines in the U.S., concentrated in Texas, Louisiana, Chicago, and Ashburn, Virginia.
• Hydrogen production in the U.S. is mostly tied to industries like refineries and heavy metals, but ECL is repurposing it for clean energy.
• ECL uses hydrogen from natural gas with carbon capture (blue hydrogen) and aims to transition to green hydrogen.
• ECL blends green and blue hydrogen, calling it “turquoise hydrogen,” to ensure flexibility in sourcing while transitioning to 100% green hydrogen.
• ECL has patented technology that integrates data centers with solar power plants to produce on-site hydrogen and energy storage.
• ECL was founded in 2021 by Yuval Bachar and Rajesh Gopinath, who has extensive experience in the energy sector.
• ECL received initial funding from Koch Industries, through its subsidiary Molex, and later funding from individual investors.
• ECL is expanding internationally, with operations in Japan, Singapore, Europe, and the U.S., focusing on markets with hydrogen availability.
• Yuval Bachar was previously a principal architect at Microsoft Azure, working on AI platforms for self-healing data centers.
• Before founding ECL, Yuval led data center architecture at LinkedIn, developed the Open19 platform, and worked at Facebook and Cisco for several years.
