A lot has happened since a delighted crowd of Milam County leaders gathered in a cold November drizzle under a tent just south of the former Alcoa smelter to welcome Whinstone to town.
It looks different now. The cryptocurrency mining company has started a massive multi-building one-million square-foot data center, envisioned to eventually become the largest of its kind in the world.
Chad Harris, Whinstone CXO (duties in construction, strategy, capital) told The Reporter excavation work is complete, some out-buildings are going up and pad pouring for two of 10 major buildings at the site is scheduled to begin this week.
LOCAL HIRINGS—What’s more, Whinstone is already hiring and they are bringing local people on board.
“We’ve got about 10 Rockdale residents on board already,” Harris said. “We plan to continue hiring about two to three persons per week. It’s just a matter of having places for them to work as the construction goes along.”
Whinstone is using a number of local firms as the gargantuan project gets into high gear, including Perry & Perry Builders, Texas Electric and Mine Services.
Whinstone officials had previously said as many as 200 permanent jobs may be created when the project is complete.
“This is a going to be a huge facility and it’s going to take quite awhile to construct,” Harris said. “As of now, early on, were are on schedule, maybe a little bit ahead.”
PLEDGE—At November’s groundbreaking, Harris promised Whinstone was “here to stay” and pledged the company would be involved in the community, a statement he doubled down on this week.
“That is as important to us as anything,” he said. “We mean that. We have already been involved in some community activities.”
The company anticipates an initial capital investment of $100-million in building construction and another $50-million in furniture, fixtures and equipment.
Located at the former Alcoa Rock-dale Operations due to readily available interface with the state’s power grid, Whinstone’s first phase goal is 100-megawatts on the way to an eventual usage of one gigawatt (1,000 megawatts).
Whinstone’s facility will include blockchain, video rendering and artificial intelligence.
Blockchain, a component of Bitcoin mining, is described as a “digital ledger.” Video rendering is using information from a coded data source to produce and display an image.
Artificial intelligence is the kind of high tech which drives “Siri” and facilitates sophisticated chat options.
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