Texas has been experiencing significant growth in artificial intelligence data centers; further pushing the need for fresh water. In Texas, around 463 million gallons of fresh water have been used to cool down AI databases as of 2023. In 2025 alone, data centers all across the state of Texas used almost 50 billion gallons of water. The amount of water used to power softwares such as Microsoft Open AI, Google, ChatGPT, and Meta, could instead be used to supply millions of households with fresh, clean water. Considering the fact that the average midsized data center uses around 300,000 gallons of water in a single day, this is a major problem for the environment.
This begs the question: Why Texas? Texas is quickly becoming one of the major locations for AI centers. This is because Texas uses an independent energy grid, meaning that the state operates its own power system separate from the country. This makes AI usage faster and more efficient for the millions of people using it every second.
As of December 2025, two data centers in San Antonio have used 463 million gallons of water in the past two years. It’s estimated that by 2030, artificial intelligence could potentially reach 399 billion gallons of the total water use in Texas.
