AI in El Paso: what's happening and what it means for local businesses

For a while, AI felt like something happening in California. In 2026 it showed up in El Paso in concrete terms: a data center campus under construction in Northeast El Paso and another across the state line in Santa Teresa, a university wrapping up a regional push to teach AI in classrooms, workshops for owners Downtown and a new Texas law on how AI may be used.

We build AI systems for El Paso businesses, so owners ask us about all of it. Here's what has actually happened, with sources at the end, and what we think it means for a business in the 915. The facts below were checked on October 15, 2026.

The Meta and BlackRock data center campus

On July 28, 2026, Meta and BlackRock announced a joint venture to build and own a 1-gigawatt AI data center campus in El Paso, a project reported at roughly $14 billion. Under the announced terms, funds managed by BlackRock would hold about 80% and Meta about 20%. Meta manages construction and will be the campus's initial tenant. The companies say the first computing capacity is planned for 2028, according to KFOX14 and Reuters.

The project has its critics. Residents who live near the site have told KTSM they've noticed more noise, dust and construction activity since work began. Those concerns are worth following as the project moves forward.

For a local business, the meaning is simpler than the headlines. A data center is a building full of computers. It doesn't put AI into your front office, and the tools you'd actually use, like a phone assistant or follow-up texts, run in the cloud wherever the servers sit. What the campus does signal is that very large companies now see El Paso as a place to build.

Data centers near El Paso: quick answers

These are the questions people ask Google most about data centers in the region. Here are the short answers, as reported so far.

What is Meta building in El Paso? An AI data center campus in far Northeast El Paso, near the Texas and New Mexico line. Meta announced it in October 2025 as its 29th data center and its third in Texas. The first phase was reported at more than $1.5 billion, the site can scale to 1 gigawatt and Meta expects it online in 2028. Reports at the time cited about 1,800 construction jobs at the peak and about 100 operations jobs. In March 2026, Meta said it was raising its investment to more than $10 billion, with about 300 full-time jobs expected once the campus runs and about 4,000 construction workers at the peak.

How does that relate to the Meta and BlackRock deal? It's the same campus. In the July 2026 venture, Meta contributed the land and the construction already underway, and it will lease the entire campus. The roughly $14 billion is the venture's total development cost for the buildings and their power, cooling and connectivity. The three headline numbers measure different things at different times, so don't add them up: more than $1.5 billion for the first phase in October 2025, more than $10 billion of Meta investment in March 2026 and about $14 billion in total development costs under the venture.

Are there any other data centers coming to El Paso? The largest nearby is Project Jupiter in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, in Doña Ana County just west of El Paso. It's a campus of four data center buildings on about 1,400 acres, proposed by BorderPlex Digital Assets and its development partner STACK Infrastructure, with Oracle and OpenAI behind it. In September 2025, OpenAI named the Doña Ana County site as one of its new Stargate sites with Oracle, and county commissioners approved up to $165 billion in industrial revenue bonds for the project. NPR has reported that the site's planned 2.5 gigawatts of electricity could power more than half of New Mexico. Separately, Bloomberg reported in March 2026 that the Army plans to work with Carlyle on a data center at Fort Bliss, in a deal that was still being negotiated.

Where in Texas is AI being built? Besides Meta's El Paso campus, the best-known Texas sites belong to Stargate: the flagship campus in Abilene, plus sites in Shackelford County and Milam County that OpenAI announced in September 2025.

Why are people protesting? Mostly over water and power in a dry region. In El Paso, El Paso Electric has asked state regulators to approve a 366-megawatt natural gas plant to serve the Meta site, and local advocates worry it could raise utility rates and worsen air pollution. Meta says its closed-loop cooling needs no water on most days and has pledged to restore twice the water the site uses. In May 2026, the El Paso City Council voted unanimously to stop recruiting or offering incentives to future hyperscale data centers, a move that doesn't affect Meta's project. In June, the council voted down a push to cancel Meta's incentive agreement. Near Santa Teresa, farmers and residents worry about groundwater and river water, and NPR noted that the project's water estimates have kept changing.

The debate turned physical at a Doña Ana County Commission meeting on July 28, 2026, which included an update from the Project Jupiter developers. Opponents protested after a limited public comment period, a shoving match broke out and three people were arrested, according to KOB and Searchlight New Mexico. Supporters, who made up most of the speakers that day, point to jobs and tax revenue.

For a local business owner, the effect is mostly indirect. Thousands of construction workers are in the region while these campuses go up, and the water and power decisions involve the same utilities your business pays, so they're worth following. Treat job and revenue projections as projections until they show up.

UTEP and the push to teach AI locally

In August 2026, UTEP's College of Education hosted the Built Here Summit on the future of AI, education and work in El Paso. It drew more than 100 regional leaders and marked the close of El Paso Computes, an initiative to build computer science and AI education across the region. The college says the effort trained more than 700 educators and reached more than 25,000 K-12 students.

For owners, this is a slow change but a real one. The students in those classrooms are your future hires and customers, and they're growing up treating AI as a normal tool. Over time, that makes it easier to hire people who can work alongside the systems you put in place.

Where El Paso owners can learn hands-on

You can get practical training without leaving town:

• The Microsoft El Paso Innovation Hub, at 500 W Overland Ave Downtown, is a project of the El Paso Community Foundation in partnership with Microsoft. It hosts hands-on technology workshops, including sessions on AI.
• The El Paso Chamber held an AI Advantage session at the Hub on June 11, 2026, about AI readiness: working out where AI could help a business most and which practical first steps to take.
• UTEP's AI Connect program has offered free presentations in English and Spanish at City of El Paso senior centers on AI basics and how scammers use AI, with support from Microsoft TechSpark and the El Paso Innovation Hub.

Schedules change, so check each organization's site for upcoming dates. AI Connect is aimed at older adults, but the scam topic is worth sharing with your staff too: fake payment requests dressed up as a real vendor target businesses as well.

Texas's AI law, in plain terms

The Texas Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act, known as TRAIGA (House Bill 149), took effect on January 1, 2026. Based on the law firm Norton Rose Fulbright's summary, these are the points a local owner should know:

• The Texas Attorney General enforces it. The act does not give individuals a private right to sue.
• Its duty to tell people they're dealing with AI falls mainly on government agencies.
• Healthcare providers must tell patients when AI is used in their service or treatment.
• It also prohibits a short list of harmful uses, such as using AI with the intent to unlawfully discriminate.

This is not legal advice. If you run a clinic, a dental office, a med spa or any business that provides healthcare, talk to your attorney about what disclosure should look like for you. For everyone else, the practical rule is the one we follow anyway: be honest when a customer is talking to an AI, and make it easy to reach a person.

What it means for your business

None of this changes what your customers want from you. It does change what they expect: once people get used to instant answers from AI tools, a full voicemail box or a two-day wait on a DM feels slower than it used to. Here's how we'd think about it:

• Expect fast answers to become the norm. A customer who gets a helpful reply at 9 p.m. from one business will notice when the next one makes them wait until morning.
• Treat bilingual as the starting point. In El Paso, an assistant that only handles English leaves out customers who prefer Spanish or switch between both.
• Use the local training. As the talent and training scene grows, you and your staff can learn the basics close to home, in English or Spanish.
• Start with one measurable leak. Missed calls, slow replies to web leads and quotes nobody follows up on are common ones. Pick the one that costs you the most, fix it and measure it before adding anything else.
• Don't buy the hype. A data center in Northeast El Paso doesn't make any vendor's product better. Ask what a tool does, how much of your time it takes and how you'll know it worked.

We run our own business on AI systems we built, for CRM sync, lead follow-up, proposals and reporting. The wins come from small, specific jobs done reliably, not from the biggest tool on the market.

The honest summary

El Paso is now part of the AI story in a physical way, with a major data center campus going up, a university training teachers and students and local workshops open to owners. For a local business, though, the opportunity is the same as it was before the headlines: answer faster, in both languages, and fix the one leak that costs you the most. Learn locally, ask vendors hard questions and check with your attorney if you work in healthcare.

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