Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa made it clear on the campaign trail that she would work to rein in data centers and billionaire tech barons. And now that she’s taking office, that means playing hardball with SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
“We can have a strong working relationship with Elon Musk and his companies, but it has to be on our terms,” Hinojosa said Thursday in an interview with CNNcited by Bloomberg. “It can’t just be about crushing the people of Texas, and that’s what changes now that I’m governor.”
A central plank of Hinojosa’s campaign was to demand an immediate moratorium on the construction of new data centers until lawmakers established stricter regulations and stronger protections for local communities.
In Thursday’s interview, Hinojosa reiterated her commitment to imposing stricter regulations on data centers saying she would “balance” that while keeping Texas a business-friendly state.
She also shared that she was already taking steps to crack down on Musk. Amid speculation that Texas officials would consider selling the state park land to SpaceX, Hinojosa said she spoke to the head of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to “request that no action be taken,” according to Bloomberg.
“It’s such an important resource,” she told reporters in Austin, hours before the CNN interview.
Wall Street and the AI industry are closely watching Hinojosa, as Texas has become the nucleus of the data center boom. More than a quarter of the planned data center capacity in the United States resides in the state.
Musk is deeply invested in the state, where he moved his companies SpaceX and Tesla from California. It is also reportedly exploring sites to build another large data center in Texas, complementing the controversial “Colossus” facilities it operates in Greater Memphis. Not to mention the quarter of a billion dollars he invested in the midterms to support Republican candidates.
Of course, Musk could simply do what many think is impossible – or at least economically unfeasible – and abandon ground-based AI infrastructure altogether.
“Data centers in space look pretty attractive right now,” Musk wrote on X, after the brutal election defeat.
Learn more about AI: The tech industry has gone all-in on Trump, and it’s now in grave danger now that Americans have turned against him.
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