Data centers in Mason County

AI hyperscaler Nscale, which acquired the site through its March 2026 purchase of AIPCorp, is building the Monarch Compute Campus on about 2,250 acres near Point Pleasant in Mason County, on the Ohio River. The campus is West Virginia's first state certified, behind the meter microgrid, generating its own power on site from Marcellus Shale gas fed Caterpillar engines rather than drawing from the grid or local water supply, with a first 1.35 gigawatt phase built for Microsoft under a letter of intent and a longer term path to more than 8 gigawatts. Some Mason County residents near the site have been offered buyouts as construction proceeds, with the first phase targeted for operation in early 2027.

Starwood Digital Ventures, the data center investment platform of Starwood Capital Group, is developing Project Tamarack, a roughly 2,160 megawatt, 12 billion dollar data center in West Columbia, Mason County, about 20 miles north of Nscale's Monarch Compute Campus. Governor Patrick Morrisey announced the project's state High Impact Data Center certification on September 3, 2026 at the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce Business Summit; unlike Monarch, Tamarack plans to draw power from the grid rather than build its own power plant, and the company says it will use closed loop cooling and fund its own grid infrastructure to limit rate impacts. The project is expected to create more than 1,000 construction jobs and over 300 permanent jobs.