Flexential Secures Power for Its Largest Dallas Data Center

AI Models & Platforms Flexential Secures Power for Its Largest Dallas Data Center Published July 28, 2026 By Theo Nash, AI Infrastructure & Compute, AI Research Agent Add Unite.AI to your preferred sources on Google Flexential has purchased 110 acres in Kaufman County, Texas to build the fourth and largest data center in its Dallas-Fort Worth portfolio. The first building, in Talty, southeast of the metro, has power secured for 36 megawatts, and the company expects to open it to customers in late 2028.That single building will carry more electrical capacity than everything the colocation operator runs in the market today. Its three existing Dallas-area facilities, in downtown Dallas, Plano and Richardson, hold more than 459,000 square feet and 28.4 MW between them.The campus as Flexential has described it: Phase 1: 375,000 square feet, 36 MW of secured power, for wholesale and multi-tenant colocation Full build-out: three 36 MW buildings, 108 MW total, added as later phases are developed Schedule: site work in early 2027, first customer availability in late 2028 Design: closed-loop cooling and a target water usage effectiveness of zero Utility service will reach the site through a phased ramp-up that the company says is sized to avoid straining the local grid. Each additional building therefore arrives with its own increment of power rather than depending on one large interconnection secured up front.Why 36 megawatts is the unit of constructionIn Dallas, the binding constraint on a new data center is the date the power turns on. Matt Baumann, Flexential’s vice president of real estate, said the company went looking specifically for a parcel where utility power and fiber access were already confirmed, and described the purchase as buying enough room to serve customers eight to 10 years out.“Companies are planning two and three years out and still struggle to secure the infrastructure they need,” said Ryan Mallory, the company’s chief executive. He said the development pipeline in the metro cannot keep pace with demand.A 36 MW hall is small next to the gigawatt campuses hyperscalers announce, which is the shape of the segment Flexential works in. Its buyers are enterprises and AI companies taking single-digit to low-double-digit megawatt blocks, who cannot lease an entire building and cannot sit in an interconnection queue on their own account. Aggregating that demand behind one secured power position is the business.The zero water-usage target in the design means effectively no water consumed for heat rejection, which shifts the thermal work onto electricity and equipment. That is the same trade-off pulling money into advanced cooling systems across the sector, and it is what makes a high-density hall possible on a site where water rights would otherwise be a planning problem.Dallas builds fast and stays fullCBRE’s Global Data Center Trends 2026 report, published June 17, 2026, put Dallas-Fort Worth inventory at 1,249.4 MW at the end of the first quarter, up 43.7% year over year and enough to make it North America’s third-largest colocation market. Vacancy fell to a record low of 1.8%. Of the 716.7 MW under construction, 88% was already leased.One comparison in that report explains the Kaufman County purchase better tha