Now, those arid ranch lands are offering a new moneymaking opportunity: data centers. Lancium, an energy and data center management firm setting up shop in Fort Stockton and Abilene, is one of many companies around the country betting that building data centers close to generating sites will allow them to tap into underused clean power. In the past, companies built data centers close to internet users, to better meet consumer requests, like streaming a show on Netflix or playing a video game hosted in the cloud. But the growth of artificial intelligence requires huge data centers to train the evolving large-language models, making proximity to users less necessary. But as more of these sites start to pop up across the United States, there are new questions on whether they can meet the demand while still operating sustainably.

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Persons: ”, Ali Fenn Organizations: Netflix Locations: West Texas, Fort Stockton and Abilene, United States