It took 3 months to get inside this massive Texas data center — here’s what we saw

A rare tour of Compass Datacenters’ Red Oak campus in Texas showed the infrastructure behind the growth in computing and artificial intelligence. The company says the project brings local jobs, training and investment alongside data centre capacity, while its CEO stressed that the facility’s security and water conservation address important regional concerns.

The campus, about 20 miles south of Dallas, is planned to include 10 buildings covering roughly 2.6 million square feet. Compass says its closed-loop cooling system has used no water since operations began; around 600 people work for Compass there and another 300 for Schneider Electric. The site also has a $12.6 million training centre offering a 12-week programme, and Compass has donated $15 million towards a new animal shelter.