- Google is spending $25 billion by 2026 to expand data centers across the PJM Interconnection grid, with Virginia alone securing $9 billion in new infrastructure.
- xAI, Elon Musk’s venture, is building “Colossus” in Memphis, Tennessee, aiming for one million GPUs under a single roof.
- OpenAI’s Stargate project, with Oracle and SoftBank, is a $500 billion Texas-anchored joint venture, already operational in Abilene.
- Meta itself has two new builds outside California: the $50 billion “Hyperion” project in Louisiana and the “Prometheus” campus in Ohio.
The implication is that California layoffs may not be a story of collapse at all. They are a story of silent relocation and restructuring. Headquarters may remain in the Bay Area, but the real growth—jobs, construction, data-center operations, and AI research at scale—is shifting to states that promise fewer constraints.
As I’ve said before in other contexts, law often dictates business geography. Here, it is state AI regulation that is reshaping where the most ambitious projects land. The legal burden is clear: compliance costs will be lower in Louisiana or Texas than under California’s forthcoming AI governance statutes. And that differential, not the economy, is what decides who keeps their job and where the next 100,000 positions will be posted.
