MEMPHIS, Tenn. — City officials in West Memphis, Arkansas, say they are working with one of the country’s largest companies on infrastructure and incentives that will bring a planned data center to the city.
A city spokesman says they are working with a company called Groot LLC, but would not release more detailed information, citing non-disclosure agreements.
However, the Memphis Business Journal is reporting that Groot LLC is a local entity operating for Google, and said the company is planning a $10 billion data center on the south side of the city, just across the river from Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer in Memphis.
West Memphis officials said Groot LLC is a U.S.-based Fortune 100 company. There is no company by that name listed on the Fortune 100 list, but Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is No. 8 on that list. The Arkansas Secretary of State’s website lists a Delaware company with a Little Rock address by that name.
“We’re excited to be working with a Fortune 100 company on a project that will bring high-paying jobs, cutting-edge infrastructure, and long-term growth to West Memphis,” Mayor Marco McClendon said in a statement sent to WREG.
The West Memphis city council voted last week to approve several agreements with Groot LLC, including a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes arrangement. WREG is working to find more details on those deals.
“They’re working closely with the City of West Memphis on infrastructure planning and potential incentives to support the project’s long-term success,” said West Memphis spokesman Nick Coulter.
Plans were submitted by Groot LLC to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for environmental approval of a data center site in West Memphis.
Those plans call for a data center campus consisting of five large-scale data center buildings, supporting office buildings, parking areas, internal access roads, a utility substation, stormwater management facilities, utilities and associated infrastructure on 920 acres at the south end of Bollinger Road, behind the Coca-Cola distribution warehouse.
News of a proposed data center in West Memphis came to light last year, though the company behind it was not released. At the time, city officials said the company was requesting 10 MW of power, which would be supplied through Entergy.
They also said the project was expected to create some 300 jobs as of last year.
Google has an operations center in Southaven, Mississippi, about 16 miles southeast of the Arkansas site.
There are currently 11 data centers in the Memphis area, including xAI’s Colossus supercomputer and a second xAI site under construction in Whitehaven, according to datacentermap.com. Late last month, another company revealed it is building a 15 MW data center at a former company headquarters on Getwell Road in Memphis.