After the midterms, things are looking rocky for Elon Musk and data centers
In a TechCrunch Equity podcast discussion, the hosts said Democrats' midterm wins and local ballot measures rejecting or restricting data centers could create roadblocks for tech companies, with Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa having campaigned on restricting data centers. They noted Elon Musk's roughly half-billion-dollar Republican donations yielded little while his companies sit in a state that turned blue, and that OpenAI released a "compute campus policy blueprint" dropping NDAs and promising less secrecy. The panel also questioned whether rebranding data centers as "compute campuses" will work and noted Wall Street's cooling enthusiasm for data center spending.