Greg Abbott Data Centers & AI Billionaires & Big Business Texas

Greg Abbott Says Data Centers 'Dug Their Own Grave.' The Industry's Donors Have Given Him About $9 Million — and His Biggest Month Came Right After His 'Crackdown.'

A Texas Tribune analysis found Greg Abbott has raised about $9 million from data center-related donors since July 2025 — $2.8 million of it, his biggest monthly haul, after he 'paused' the industry. His opponent got one $25,000 check.

MAGA Report Cards · Oct 19, 2026

Greg Abbott Says Data Centers 'Dug Their Own Grave.' The Industry's Donors Have Given Him About $9 Million — and His Biggest Month Came Right After His 'Crackdown.' — Photo: Aiden Gonzalez / The Texas Tribune

Greg Abbott has spent this election season talking tough about data centers. The data center industry's donors have spent it writing him checks — and they wrote the biggest ones right after he got tough.

That is what a Texas Tribune analysis published October 19 found. The Tribune checked every donor who gave at least $25,000 to Abbott or to his Democratic opponent, Gina Hinojosa, since July 2025. Abbott has taken in about $9 million from donors tied to data centers. That's about 13% of everything he raised in that time.

Hinojosa got one data center-related check: $25,000.

The tougher he talked, the more they gave

Public opinion on data centers has soured in Texas, and Abbott, polling neck-and-neck with Hinojosa, has been trying to get on the right side of it. Here's how the money moved while he did.

June 2026: Abbott sent the Legislature a list of ideas for reining in the industry, including ending a major tax break for data centers. That same month, data center-related donors gave his campaign $1.5 million.
August 2026: Abbott paused approvals for data centers trying to connect to the state's power grid until a statewide review was done. He told ABC that data centers "dug their own grave" and "got the backlash they deserve."
After the pause: Abbott took in another $2.8 million from data center-related donors — his biggest monthly haul from the industry all cycle.

Read that again. Right after Abbott "cracked down" on data centers, the industry gave him more money than in any other month of the cycle.

Who's paying

More than half of it — $4.9 million — came from people and companies that build, own or run data centers, the Tribune found. That includes:

Rhett Bennett, CEO of Black Mountain, a Fort Worth energy company building giant data centers across Texas. He and his company gave Abbott a combined $1 million.
Toby Neugebauer, former CEO of Fermi America, the company behind the massive Project Matador data center campus in the Panhandle — $100,000.

The other $4.1 million came from donors with less direct ties — people and companies that invest in or have financial ties to data centers, or are tied to companies that build AI. Abbott's single biggest data center-linked donor was Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who sits on Tesla's board and gave $1.5 million. Elon Musk, whose Tesla runs its own AI data centers, gave $500,000.

The Tribune is careful to say the line is blurry — a lot of rich donors have more than one business interest. But it used a tighter test than Hinojosa's campaign does. Her ads put the figure at $20 million, counting companies like Netflix and CVS that rent data center space. The Tribune's $9 million doesn't count those.

Why they keep paying

You'd expect an industry under attack from a governor to stop funding him. Jim Henson, who runs the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, told the Tribune why they haven't:

"The major players in the industry realized there will be something akin to a negotiated settlement on the relevant policies, and that the governor and his legislative allies will be negotiators of the terms of what emerges. Nobody wants to be left out of the discussions, and continuing to support the governor financially demonstrates the desire to be at the table."

In plain words: the rules for data centers in Texas are about to be written, Abbott will help write them, and the industry is paying for a seat in the room. The people living next to the next data center aren't writing $1 million checks. They don't get that seat.

The "pause" was built to run past Election Day

We've looked closely at Abbott's data center crackdown before, and it keeps coming up short for the people it's supposed to protect.

The statewide audit Abbott ordered to answer Texans' questions about data centers won't report until 37 days after they vote. Rural Texans in the path of new projects called the pause "smoke and mirrors". And the Republican agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller, accused Abbott of stalling so his donors can get "grandfathered in" before any real rules take effect.

Now we know how much those donors have given while he stalls.

Abbott's campaign told the Tribune that his position is clear — data centers "must pay their own way, protect Texas' electric grid, bring their own water." It called the Tribune's reporting a "disingenuous attempt to manufacture controversy out of information that is not new."

Adding it up

Since July 2025, Greg Abbott has raised about $9 million from data center-related donors — 13% of his money — while his opponent got $25,000. He took $1.5 million from them the month he proposed ending their tax break, and $2.8 million, his biggest month, after he paused their grid hookups and said they "dug their own grave." The study meant to answer Texans' questions about data centers arrives after the election.