SoftBank-Linked Entity Buys Large Portion of Former Alcoa Site in Texas

An entity linked to Japanese multinational investment firm SoftBank Group Corp. has purchased more than 4,700 acres of a former Alcoa Corp. smelting site near Rockdale, about 60 miles northeast of Austin. Southridge Land TX LLC acquired about 4,709 acres of the former 50-square-mile Alcoa site, according to an April 24 deed filed with Milam County. The entity listed SoftBank's Menlo Park, California, office as its address. SoftBank's plans for the property remain unclear. The site is part of a larger advanced manufacturing and logistics campus being developed by Dallas-based Xebec Holdings LLC. Part of the site will be home to Austin-based T1 Energy Inc.'s new solar cell factory, which could employ as many as 1,800 people. Another portion will be dedicated to a 1,200-megawatt, gas-fired power plant, with the remainder slated for residential, hospitality, retail and office use. About 200-acres of the redevelopment will also be home to a 200-acre data center that Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is the first tenant of. SB Energy, a digital infrastructure company affiliated with SoftBank, is developing an approximately $18 billion data center campus in Milam County that OpenAI selected for a future project. The more than 600-acre campus is outside the former Alcoa site near Rosebud and adjacent to an SB Energy solar project.