Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) is awaiting zoning approval for a 500 MW data center in Logan County, Illinois, estimating it will spend anywhere from $4 to $5 billion on the proposed project, according to Fox News Illinois.
This proposal parallels a separate data center initiative under consideration in neighboring Sangamon County, where Cyrus One proposed a 600 MW facility with an estimated construction cost of $500 million. Cyrus One estimates that the project will create about 100 jobs, and Hut 8 projects its own build will create 200 jobs when factoring in both its organization and a future tenant for the site.
Hut 8 will need to wait for zoning approval before breaking ground. The next scheduled meeting for the Logan County Board is January 20.
“We’re in the top of the first inning here, we don’t exactly know,” Greg Irwin, senior vice president of energy at Hut 8, said. “Candidly, it may not be AI, whether it’s training or inference at all, it could be a cloud-based center… and what that is is more for static data.”
Last month, the company secured a partnership with Fluidstack and artificial intelligence firm Anthropic to develop a 245 MW AI data center.
