LOS ANGELES – Kaufman & Company, a private investment firm, has begun construction on two hyperscale data centers featuring a proprietary geodesic dome design, one outside Salt Lake City, Utah, and another in El Paso, Texas. The company says the design tackles the two most common criticisms of AI infrastructure: massive power consumption and water usage.
The dome shape creates a natural convection current, reducing the need for traditional chiller plants, and combines air cooling with direct liquid immersion to cut water use by about 90% compared with conventional data centers. The structure also uses roughly 30% less material than a standard rectangular building. Each facility can scale from 10-20 megawatts up to 50-100 megawatts and can be operational in as little as 12 months, avoiding the multi-year waits for grid connections typical of other projects.
“The issues of power, water, appearance and jobs are real, impactful concerns, and we were seeing them in our own projects and across the industry,” said Daniel Kaufman, founder of Kaufman & Company. “The geometry is what makes this exciting. It is a dome with a green roof that blends into the landscape rather than another lit box stretching for miles.”
Each dome will draw up to 90% of its power from behind-the-meter sources. In Utah, that power comes from rooftop solar. In El Paso, the company is developing its own geothermal generation, which will also supply power to outside users. The green roof collects rainwater for cooling, meeting an estimated 90% of each site’s cooling needs.
The El Paso site sits on roughly 24,000 acres of former ranch and oil and gas land near the U.S. border. Phase one already has tenants secured, and the company plans to build as many as ten additional domes there over the next decade. Kaufman & Company is also in early talks to expand to Louisiana, Oklahoma, North and South Dakota, and internationally to India, Europe, and Canada.
Given the scale, Kaufman & Company has brought in outside capital and infrastructure partners for the first time, including Meta, Google, Oracle, Microsoft, AT&T, Zayo, Fiberlight, and Aurelia, along with institutional lenders and government agencies. The company will pursue LEED Platinum certification for the facilities.
Ryan Wallace, Managing Director of Server Dome Global, will lead the data center initiative, supported by David Keegan, CEO, who has developed 40 million square feet of data centers; David Jackson, President; and Bradley Blewett, CFO. Kaufman will shift his focus to other ventures, including workforce housing and a boutique hotel conversion in Rumford, Maine.
“In Utah, the community saw the server dome, and it changed the whole conversation,” Kaufman said. “Drive through that area, and you see traditional data centers that are just big boxes. This is not blight, it is something we hope will be beautiful.”
