Published 2026-11-09 · Cyclone Bolt

Google will build its first data center in Wyoming, a long-term investment the company puts at $17 billion. Steve Walter, Google's vice president of global infrastructure and energy, announced the project on November 5, 2026, naming Tallgrass Energy, Black Hills Energy, American Electric Power and Related Digital as partners. One day later, on November 6, Denver-based developer Crusoe said Google had acquired its site in southeast Wyoming, closing out Crusoe's pre-development work on site selection, government approvals and a power strategy built with Tallgrass. TechCrunch reported the same day that Google did not disclose what it paid for the unfinished project.

A campus with its own power plant

The power plan is the unusual part of this announcement. Google says the project is contracted with AEP for a 702 MW fuel cell development with carbon capture and storage, which the company describes as the largest planned development of its kind to date. The fuel cells convert natural gas to electricity and, according to Google, will be made in the United States by Bloom Energy. Captured carbon dioxide is to be stored at Tallgrass's Eastern Wyoming Sequestration Hub. Google says the project brings its total contracted carbon-capture capacity to nearly 1 gigawatt.

Fuel cells are not the only source. Google says it is also buying power from gas generators operated by Tallgrass Energy and Black Hills Energy, and is running an engineering study on fitting Tallgrass's combined-cycle turbines with carbon capture. Crusoe described the strategy it handed over as a hybrid of fuel cells, grid power and natural gas turbines, with carbon capture as a long-term roadmap rather than a day-one feature.

On the community side, Google wrote that it will pay for the full cost of the power it uses and cover infrastructure needs driven by its growth. The company expects the project to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes for Laramie County and School District 1, and says it met with more than 200 residents in the county. The data center will be air-cooled, which Google says is meant to limit strain on local water.

How the site changed hands

According to TechCrunch, Crusoe first announced the Wyoming project last year with Tallgrass, and Bloomberg first reported the deal with Google in June. TechCrunch also reported that the campus is planned to eventually scale to 10 gigawatts of power capacity. Crusoe's statement framed the sale as the end of its assignment. Chase Lochmiller, Crusoe's co-founder and CEO, said in the release that the company's pre-construction work in origination, entitlement and de-risking "have set up the Wyoming project for construction and eventual operation." Crusoe said it has more than 6 GW of capacity under contract and over 40 GW in its pipeline, and noted that it remains the developer of Google's campus now under construction in Armstrong County, outside Amarillo, Texas.

Timing is still open. Wyoming News Now reported on November 8 that Google's timeframe for building the first facility was unclear as of its report, while Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins said Google would break ground soon and that Tallgrass was already preparing a one-square-mile area for the first phase.

What a build like this means for bolting and fastener supply

A data center campus that arrives with a 702 MW generation plant, gas generators and a carbon-capture connection is closer to a power project than to a conventional building. That changes the fastener bill of materials. The data halls themselves consume anchor bolts for foundations and equipment pads, structural bolting for steel framing, and threaded rod and hardware for cable tray, busway and raised-floor supports. Air cooling adds rooftop or yard-mounted units, each sitting on anchored steel.

The generation side brings in flanged piping. Natural gas supply lines, fuel cell skids, turbine and generator connections, and any future carbon dioxide compression and pipeline tie-ins are bolted joints. Buyers on such work typically specify stud bolts and heavy hex nuts in ASTM A193 and A194 grades, with coatings such as hot-dip galvanizing or PTFE-based finishes chosen for exposure, and stainless steel studs where corrosion resistance matters. Specifications on power work often call for certified material test reports, heat-lot traceability from melt through finished part, and dimensional inspection records. Some owners and engineers also require domestic melt or a documented country of origin. In every case the grade, coating and documentation requirements come from the project's engineer of record and the purchase specification, not from the fastener supplier.

Projects of this size also share a procurement pattern: large take-offs early for foundations and structure, then a long tail of smaller buys as trades close out and scopes change. Those late shorts are often the hardest items to source on time, which is why procurement teams on power generation and industrial construction work plan for them at the start.

Where Cyclone fits

Cyclone Bolt is a Houston, Texas manufacturer of fasteners, threaded products and custom machined components, established in 2016. The company manufactures stud bolts, stainless steel studs, heavy hex nuts, hex bolts and cap screws, double-end and tap-end studs, washers and gaskets, and custom machined components, and holds AS9100D, AS9120B, ISO 9001:2015, API Spec Q1, API 20E and API 20F certifications, which are described on the quality page. Cyclone is supplying several large data center builds in Texas and welcomes more, from full-build take-offs to the shorts at the end of a project.

If you are pricing bolting for a data center, power or industrial project, request a quote and send the specification.

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