BREAKING: Behind Closed Doors, Abbott’s Team Worked with Big Tech to Blanket Texas with Data Centers [POLITICO]
DALLAS, TX – Facing his toughest reelection fight after 30 years in public office, career politician Greg Abbott has been working overtime trying to convince Texans that he’s suddenly cracking down on data centers.
But bombshell new reporting from POLITICO reveals that less than one year ago, senior members of Abbott’s staff were meeting behind closed doors with some of the largest tech companies in the world to figure out how to “remove roadblocks” to bring even more data centers to Texas.
“A person at the meeting, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about what happened, said the message from Abbott’s office was clear: We want data centers to come to Texas, and we want to work with the industry to remove roadblocks to make that happen,” according to POLITICO’s reporting.
POLITICO found that Abbott’s chief of staff and other senior aides met privately on December 16, 2025 with representatives from Google, OpenAI, Meta, Amazon Web Services, and Nvidia, along with Texas electricity leaders and the state’s largest transmission companies. Absent from the meeting was anyone from the state agency responsible for representing residential and small business ratepayers.
Two days later, ERCOT announced sweeping changes for connecting massive new power users to the Texas electrical grid to help data centers get connected even faster, using a framework that was strikingly similar to one proposed by Big Tech, according to POLITICO.
As Texas faced soaring electricity bills and led the nation in the highest number of utility disconnections, the data center flood gates opened and requests from major power users more than quadrupled in a matter of months, with data centers accounting for roughly 90% of the demand.
“Greg Abbott is desperately trying to rewrite his own record, but Texans will not be fooled by his election year flip flops. They understand he rolled out the red carpet for data centers with some of the largest tax breaks in the nation and accepted nearly $30 million in political donations from data center special interests. Now, this closed door meeting tells Texans everything they need to know about who Greg Abbott is really working for: he will always put the interests of his trillionaire and billionaire donors over the needs and concerns of working Texas families. Data centers will get every green light under the sun if Greg Abbott gets four more years,” said Texas Democratic Party Spokesman Jacob Long.
POLITICO’s reporting follows news that Abbott has continued to approve dozens of data center permits even after promising Texas that permits were paused and as data center interests have continued to pour millions of dollars into his campaign.
Read for yourself:
By Shelby Webb | October 27, 2026
“On Dec. 16, 2025, two days before Texas announced sweeping changes to expedite grid access to data centers, Abbott’s top staff held a closed-door meeting with representatives of the state’s largest tech and transmission companies.”
“The documents show representatives from Google, OpenAI, Meta, Amazon Web Services and Nvidia were ‘confirmed’ to meet with Abbott’s team, along with Texas’ top electricity regulator, grid manager and representatives of the state’s four major transmission companies.”
“A person in the meeting said the message from Abbott’s office was clear: “We want data centers to come to Texas, and we want to work with the industry to remove roadblocks to make that happen.”
“Abbott’s chief of staff Robert Black’s calendar called it a “transmission roundtable. Notably, absent from the list of attendees were any officials from the Office of the Public Utility Counsel, a state agency tasked with representing residential and small business ratepayers’ interests.”
“According to one attendee, officials sought to reassure developers worried about delays: Our prior processes don’t work, and we’re coming up with a solution that works.”
“Two days later, on Dec. 18, 2025, ERCOT unveiled “a wholesale overhaul” of how Texas would bring large power users — almost all data centers — onto the grid, including studying projects in groups and granting permission to connect in batches.”
“After the changes, ERCOT saw interconnection requests from large power users skyrocket from 48 gigawatts in the fourth quarter of 2025 to 198 GW just in the first quarter of 2026. Eventually, ERCOT’s large-load queue exceeded 470 GW, 90% of which was data-center demand.”
“Republican Rep. Wes Virdell told POLITICO he had warned Abbott’s chief of staff about rural opposition a year earlier: I think Abbott, once he saw the polling roughly five to six months after I told him he’s losing support in Hill Country over this stuff, he changed his tune.”
