Skybox files for a $550 million fourth data center in Hutto, Texas, as the state tightens grid rules.
Skybox and Prologis have filed an application with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation to build Skybox Hutto 4, a 846,300-square-foot core-and-shell data center at 3399 County Road 132 in Williamson County. The $550 million project, scheduled for construction between January 2027 and October 2028, would be the largest of four planned buildings at their Hutto campus, located roughly 28 miles northeast of Austin. The land is owned by Hutto Data Center Campus LLC, an entity affiliated with Prologis.
Skybox has been steadily developing the site since filing plans for Hutto 1 in October 2023, followed by Hutto 2 in April 2024 and Hutto 3 in May 2024. Hutto 1 and Hutto 2 are each 235,720 square feet as two-story buildings, while Hutto 3 spans 492,350 square feet, also planned as two stories. Hutto 4 represents a significant scaling up of the campus, designed as a single-story facility nearly double the size of Hutto 3. The partnership between Skybox and Prologis dates to early 2021, when they converted a Prologis warehouse in Chicago into a data center.
The four buildings comprise the Skybox and Prologis PowerCampus, expected to deliver 600 megawatts of IT capacity across 3.88 million square feet. The full campus represents a cumulative investment between $5 billion and $10 billion across up to six planned buildings, positioning it among the largest planned data center developments in Central Texas. The PowerCampus occupies Hutto's 1,400-acre Megasite along U.S. Route 79, a corridor also home to Titan Development's 188-acre Hutto Mega TechCenter and located a short distance from Samsung's $17 billion semiconductor plant in neighboring Taylor. Hutto City Council approved a development agreement and Chapter 312 tax abatement for the project in July 2023 following land annexation and rezoning. Skybox also operates projects in Dallas, Houston, Wichita Falls, and other Austin-area locations, while Iron Mountain and Colovore are separately developing sites in Hutto.
Supporting such scale requires substantial utility infrastructure. Oncor Electric Delivery Co. and the Lower Colorado River Authority acquired approximately 70 acres adjacent to the PowerCampus to construct two dedicated 300-megawatt substations. Prologis executives have told investors the company has secured 1.4 gigawatts of data center power capacity globally, with a long-term goal of 10 gigawatts over the next decade.
The filing arrives amid a significant regulatory shift. On September 21, Governor Greg Abbott directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to freeze environmental and air quality permits for data center projects pending completion of statewide grid reliability and water consumption audits by ERCOT and the Texas Water Development Board. Days earlier, on September 18, the Public Utility Commission of Texas adopted a rule requiring large power loads of 75 megawatts or more in the ERCOT region to post $50,000 per megawatt in financial security before grid interconnection studies commence. The regulation derives from Senate Bill 6, enacted to protect retail electric ratepayers from stranded transmission infrastructure costs. These measures represent a markedly different regulatory environment than existed when Hutto officials first courted the PowerCampus in 2023.
The new framework reflects broader strain on Hutto itself. The city ranked as the 13th fastest-growing U.S. municipality with at least 20,000 residents in Census data released in May 2025, adding 3,681 residents in a single year for a 9.4% growth rate. Hutto's population expanded from 27,577 in 2020 to over 46,000. Williamson County projects its population will more than double from roughly 727,480 residents to 1.6 million by 2050, placing it among the nation's top 10 fastest-growing counties.
This growth has strained Hutto's finances and infrastructure. Rapid industrial construction and suburban expansion prompted municipal water and wastewater rate increases in June 2024 and October 2025 to fund a new $198 million wastewater treatment plant. City leaders have faced public pushback over street maintenance and water capacity demands as the Megasite corridor industrializes. Whether Skybox Hutto 4 will require state-level environmental approval under the new freeze, or how PUCT financial security requirements apply to its grid interconnection, will become clearer as the project moves through permitting over the next two years.