Data center developer TeraWulf has signed a construction contract to build out its planned hyperscale data center for Anthropic in Hawesville.
Fluor Corporation, a construction firm based in Irving, Texas, inked an engineering, procurement, and construction contract with TeraWulf to build three data center buildings in Hawesville. Early construction work is already underway, according to a company press release. Fluor is involved in several large-scale data center projects worldwide, including facilities in Finland, the Netherlands and India.
Founded in 2021 as a Bitcoin-mining outfit, TeraWulf has since shifted its focus to data center development amid growing demand for AI computing infrastructure.
In February, TeraWulf acquired the vacant Century Aluminum site for approximately $301.9 million, with plans to redevelop the property into a hyperscale data center known as the Justified Data Campus. The project spans more than 250 acres and has access to up to 482 megawatts of electrical capacity. Initial operations are expected to begin in 2027.
“Fluor is proud to expand our partnership with TeraWulf and support the delivery of infrastructure needed to meet the rapidly growing demand for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing,” Fluor President of Advanced Technology and Life Sciences Leo Kaid said in the release. “Our integrated engineering, procurement and construction capabilities, combined with our data center expertise and skilled workforce, position us to deliver this important project with a strong focus on safety, quality and schedule certainty.”
In July, TeraWulf signed a 20-year agreement with artificial intelligence company Anthropic to provide approximately 401 megawatts of electrical capacity for the servers and computing equipment that support its AI systems. Anthropic is best-known for its large language model chatbot, Claude.
The lease agreement is expected to generate approximately $19 billion in revenue for TeraWulf over its 20-year term, with the potential to reach up to $33 billion if Anthropic exercises both of its additional five-year extensions.
Hawesville is a rural Ohio River city in Hancock County, between Louisville and Owensboro, with approximately 1,000 residents. Historically, its economy has relied on agriculture and heavy industry, particularly aluminum and paper manufacturing. In 2022, one of the city's largest industrial employers, Century Aluminum, shuttered its smelting facility after more than five decades of operation, eliminating more than 600 jobs, according to a Kentucky legislative report.
Century Aluminum’s facility closure left a vacuum in the local economy, leaving hundreds of people without gainful employment and removing a major electricity consumer from the regional power grid.
However, the Big Rivers Electric Corporation, a western Kentucky electric cooperative, continued to maintain 482 megawatts of transmission capacity at the former industrial facility. This left substantial electrical capacity available at the site, making it an attractive option for a company like TeraWulf, which was looking for existing capacity to power its data centers.
Data center development has accelerated across the United States over the past five years, driven primarily by the artificial intelligence arms race. Major tech companies, including Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic, have invested heavily in data center infrastructure to support the computing power required to develop and operate their AI models.
Data centers consume large quantities of electricity to power the computer servers that process and store information for AI models. According to a Congressional Research Service report, roughly half of a data center's electricity consumption comes from operating computers and other electronic equipment, while much of the remainder is used to power cooling systems to prevent the machines from overheating.
The Justified Data Campus is not the company’s only proposed data center in Kentucky. In May, the company acquired approximately 308 acres at EastPark Industrial Park in Grayson, a city in northeastern Kentucky, to develop the Muskie Data Campus. The project is expected to support up to 1,000 megawatts of electrical capacity, pending regulatory approval. There is no reported tenant as of now.
