Proposed $500 million data center could rise on North Slope

A proposed $500 million data center on Alaska’s North Slope would be more than a technology campus. It would be a major industrial customer, one that could bring construction work, longer-term operations jobs, contractor demand and potential new tax revenue to a region still built around oil, gas and logistics.

State regulators took a first formal step on May 12, when the Alaska Department of Natural Resources issued a preliminary best-interest finding for STAK Energy Corporation’s request for a 50-year state land lease. Public comments are due June 15 at 4:30 p.m. Alaska Daylight Time. STAK first filed its application on Nov. 21, 2025, then submitted a revised version on March 12. The lease would cover a commercial natural-gas-powered data center with modular units, on-site power generation, fiber optic links and supporting utilities.

The proposed site sits about one mile west of the Dalton Highway at Milepost 390, west of both the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation right-of-way and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. That location gives the project access to the North Slope’s cold air for cooling and to nearby natural-gas resources, but it also puts the burden on the developer and the state to prove the site can support a heavy electric load in a remote Arctic setting.

That is the real issue for North Slope leaders. A project of this scale could mean payrolls, local contracts and more business for transport, maintenance and service firms. It could also force hard questions about roads, water, power delivery and the permitting load that comes with building large infrastructure in a place where weather and distance shape every cost. The North Slope Borough spans nearly 95,000 square miles, so even a single square-mile project is a serious land-use decision.

The proposal also lands in the middle of a broader push to recast the North Slope as an energy hub for digital infrastructure. In March, North Slope Borough and Twenty First Century Utilities presented North Slope Power at CERAWeek, pitching a next-generation utility built to turn more than 35 trillion cubic feet of proven North Slope gas reserves into power for AI data centers and industrial load, with possible exports into the Railbelt grid. The presentation described a 3-gigawatt first phase and potential growth to 10 gigawatts.

The idea is not entirely untested. In 2024, Hilcorp Alaska and TA Infrastructure proposed a 1.4-megawatt pilot data center at Endicott field to see whether such operations could work on the North Slope and what logistical problems would surface. Gov. Mike Dunleavy has also been recruiting data centers to Alaska, arguing the state needs only an anchor tenant to strengthen the case for a North Slope gas pipeline. For now, the $500 million proposal is real enough to trigger state review, and big enough to test whether Arctic data infrastructure is economic strategy or just Arctic hype.