Blue Owl Capital just got into the data center game this year, but it is wasting no time building up a portfolio. Its latest move: a $3.4B JV to build in Texas.

Asset manager Blue Owl, AI infrastructure firm Crusoe Energy Systems and investor Primary Digital Infrastructure are joining forces to build a 1M SF campus outside of Abilene, the companies announced Tuesday.

The two-building, 206-megawatt Lancium Clean Campus is being designed, built and operated by Crusoe to handle AI workloads at scale. The campus will be optimized for direct-to-chip liquid cooling and have the flexibility to include air cooling. Both buildings will be able to operate up to 100,000 graphic processing units on one integrated network fabric.

Crusoe chose Abilene, a metro area 150 miles west of Fort Worth, because of its low-carbon energy availability. The data center will use on- and off-site renewable energy sources like nearby wind developments. Plans are in the works for a potential solar installation on the campus as well.

Already 100% preleased to an undisclosed hyperscale company, the data center is set to open early next year. It is expected to contribute $1B to the Abilene economy over the next 20 years and create 100 local jobs.

While a newcomer in the real estate scene, Blue Owl Capital has been active in 2024, particularly in the data center sphere. It made its commercial real estate debut in April with the acquisition of lender Prima Capital for $170M. Prima had $10B under management and a special focus in CMBS.

The asset manager is reportedly weighing the acquisition of digital infrastructure investor IPI Partners, the parent of data center companies Stack Infrastructure and RadiusDC. The deal is worth $1B and could be finalized this month. It would be Blue Owl’s third data center-focused deal since August, including the Crusoe deal.

The firm also partnered up with PowerHouse Data Centers and Chrisia Technology Parks to build large-scale data centers for AI cloud provider CoreWeave — a project that could end up costing $5B.

Blue Owl is a New York-based firm with more than $192B in assets under management.