New Era Energy and Digital data center ambitions in West Texas took a significant step forward on April 14, 2026, with the company announcing a $115 million financing package to advance its Texas Critical Data Centers campus in Ector County, outside Odessa. The package combines $110 million in gross proceeds from a public equity offering with the initial $20 million first tranche of a $290 million senior secured term loan credit facility provided by Macquarie Group‘s Commodities and Global Markets business, alongside a $5 million direct equity investment from Macquarie at approximately $5 per share.
The Texas Critical Data Centers campus spans 438 acres and follows a multi-phase master plan targeting capacity of over 1 gigawatt at full build-out. The first phase delivers approximately 200 megawatts of initial capacity powered via utility grid, with subsequent phases adding 450 megawatts of on-site gas-fired generation. New Era is engineering the campus specifically to support next-generation hyperscale compute needs, combining grid and behind-the-meter power generation to reduce exposure to interconnection queue delays. Construction starts this year with initial operations targeting 2027.
How the Capital Stack Comes Together
The Macquarie credit facility provides New Era with $290 million in total senior secured term loan capacity, giving the company financial flexibility to invest across multiple phases of the TCDC development. New Era CEO E. Will Gray II described the financing as securing capital required to support development beyond phase 1 while significantly strengthening the company’s balance sheet. Stream Data Centers previously signed a non-binding letter of intent to form a joint venture with New Era for the development and financing of the campus, with equity capital to be provided by an unnamed institutional partner.
The power strategy is a defining feature of the project. Thunderhead Energy Solutions has partnered with New Era to finance, construct, and operate approximately 250 megawatts of behind-the-meter gas-fired generation to supply the campus, with an LOI also signed with Mawgan Capital for an additional 250 megawatts of gas generation. That combined behind-the-meter power capacity of up to 500 megawatts allows the campus to operate independently of grid constraints during early phases, addressing one of the primary bottlenecks slowing data center development across Texas and the broader US market.
Why the New Era Energy Data Center Location Gives It a Structural Edge
The Ector County location reflects a broader shift in data center site selection toward regions where energy access, land availability, and construction speed converge. The Permian Basin offers abundant natural gas supply for behind-the-meter generation, large available land parcels, and relatively favourable permitting timelines compared to constrained primary markets like Northern Virginia or the Phoenix metropolitan area. New Era’s background as an energy company operating in the Permian gives it relationships and operational infrastructure that purpose-built data center developers entering the market from outside the region typically lack.
Primary Digital Infrastructure, which co-sponsors the TCDC project alongside New Era, brings institutional data center development experience that includes a $15 billion joint venture with Crusoe Energy Systems and Blue Owl Capital to develop a 1.2 gigawatt AI data center campus in Abilene, Texas. That Abilene campus has secured more than $11.6 billion in combined debt and equity financing, providing a template for the institutional capital deployment that the TCDC project is now following with Macquarie’s backing.
