First look: Hut 8's under-construction Louisiana data center

The intrigue: With an invitation out to select media as Hut 8 celebrated construction of its River Bend campus this week, the company offered Axios New Orleans a rare look at the data center as it's being built.

• Projects like these are typically highly secretive during construction and after they're built, but some tech companies are beginning to pull back the curtain as data centers face intense scrutiny nationwide.
• "We care about brand and community but really, we wanted to take a moment as we build to show people … what's happening, and then have them imagine what the rest of this campus [could] look like," Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot says.

The big picture: Announced late last year, Hut 8's $10 billion project about two hours north of New Orleans is part of a partnership with Fluidstack and Anthropic, which will operate and use the center's computing power.

• Hut 8 made its name in bitcoin mining, and now the company is developing AI infrastructure almost like a utility provider.

• Other Louisiana data centers include an Amazon facility in Shreveport, Applied Digital's center in Rapides Parish, and Meta's massive Hyperion project in Richland Parish.

Zoom in: Monday's event was tightly controlled, a spectacle of slick decor and custom-branded hard hats.

• A couple hundred people surrounded by video panels and museum exhibition-style company history snacked on poboys and beignets with Donald Trump Jr. and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry. Meanwhile, a small group of invited media toured the construction site without leaving a luxury tour bus.

As Hut 8 site manager Brennan Church sat at the front of the bus, he quipped that this project was "the first time I've had to deal with alligators on a construction site." He pointed out the infrastructure his team carved out of forested hunting land off a dead-end road near St. Francisville.

• There's the substation and a switchyard to manage the Entergy Louisiana power as it comes on site, and the equipment it takes to safely isolate the data center from the larger regional grid.
• There's the trestle bridge system crossing a field of rolling hills dotted with rebar and cranes to connect all that power, using 762,000 linear feet of cable, directly to the enormous data center itself.

• It'll take 1.5 million gallons of propylene glycol to keep it cool on a closed-loop system, Hut 8's Collier Pruner says, without having to draw on local water.
• In all, it's taking about 1,200 construction crew members working 24/7 to bring Hut 8's data center online by the first quarter of 2027, with full completion expected throughout next year.

It's hard to put into words how massive the central data center building is.

• At a rough estimate, just the building takes up around 14 acres of the 627-acre site.
• In other words, when I stood, at best guess, a quarter of a mile away, I couldn't even see the whole thing without tracking my head left and right. The workers around it appeared like ants tackling a behemoth.

Yes, but: Hut 8's project is small compared to some other data center projects in the works, including Meta's 230-acre Hyperion.

• "This first building is 330 megawatts. It's not the largest campus in the world," Genoot says.
• But "we really believe that bringing a cohort of people together to build this infrastructure … can make a big impact on not just the world but the communities they build in."

Between the lines: Landry clearly hopes that's the case, despite growing opposition to data centers among some conservatives.

• "When you look at the digital factory build-out in Louisiana, you realize Louisiana has actually done something right and is actually leading the country," he tells Axios New Orleans. "Who would have thought that Louisiana would be ground zero for SI and digital factories?"
• Echoing recent comments by Rep. Mike Johnson, Landry called anti-data center sentiment "propaganda built by foreign adversaries," noting he already sees the proof of an economic victory for the state.
• "Anytime you … increase people's opportunity and their wage scale, you win," Landry says.

Context: Landry's "wins" haven't come without a political cost as his administration has taken some heat for using NDAs to lure big economic development projects to the state, as others have reported.

• But not, notably, the Hut 8 project.
• "We never signed an NDA with any of the local or state leaders," says Genoot, who notes his company approached Louisiana and not the other way around. "We're a big believer in transparency."
• Still, Landry says, "the whole NDA thing is way overblown. … I think the media is confusing an NDA with public policy. You can't make public policy in the dark. You just can't do it."
• "Louisiana lost out on a great opportunity," years ago when Walt Disney reportedly considered building Disney World near New Orleans, Landry says. But word got out, and Disney moved on. And now, "guess what? [NDAs have] worked out for us. I do not want to take anything off the table that has a competitive advantage to Louisiana right now."

What we're watching: After construction, Hut 8 anticipates the River Bend facility leading to about 75 full-time jobs.

• Filling those jobs — and others like them — is "the Achilles heel in all this," Landry says.
• But "70% of those jobs do not require a four-year degree," he says, making the state's community and technical college programs more important.
• "If you can get out of high school and go into a job, and in two years be making $150,000 a year without any student debt, do you take it or not?" Landry says. "I can tell you, my son's generation, they're gobbling [that] up as quick as they can."