At the edges of the AI data center boom, rural America is up against Silicon Valley billions

The land around Hassayampa Ranch, 50 miles west of Phoenix, is dotted with saguaro cacti and home to coyotes, jackrabbits, and rattlesnakes. Its few hundred human residents were largely drawn by the tranquility and clear skies for stargazing. 

But some of the biggest names in tech are suddenly very interested in what happens on this serene stretch of desert. The region once dominated by ranches and farmland will soon become a new kind of tech hub—one that’s largely unpeopled, made up of row upon row of humming, energy- and water-hungry GPU racks in gigantic AI data centers. And there’s not much locals can do about it. 

At a weekday morning hearing in early December, nearly an hour and a half away in downtown Phoenix, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors approved an amendment that would allow for the industrial rezoning of a 2,000-acre property at Hassayampa Ranch. The vote was unanimous, even though hundreds of the ranch’s neighbors had signed petitions opposing the project. 

The developer, Anita Verma-Lallian, bought this vast tract of desert in May 2025 in a $51 million deal backed by heavyweight tech investors including billionaire venture capitalist, podcast cohost, and Trump mega-donor Chamath Palihapitiya. The plan? A massive AI data center project that will likely draw a major cloud provider or Big Tech “hyperscaler” such as Meta, Read Entire Article