Lambda announced on Wednesday, November 4, that it will take over Project Red Clay, an AI data center campus in Lowndes County, Alabama, with an estimated investment of $33.1 billion, according to Data Center Dynamics. Cloverleaf Infrastructure has been readying the project for development. Lambda expects the campus to support about 1,000 jobs for the duration of the project and more than 225 full-time roles once it is operating.
The project will be powered by Alabama Power, pending regulatory approval. Construction is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2027 and take up to five years, with first operations expected in the fourth quarter of 2028. Documents shared by Cloverleaf state that the company agrees to use commercially reasonable efforts to invest at least $16 billion in aggregate capital investment in the project not later than seven years after the placed-in-service date.
The campus is planned to offer 1 GW of capacity, with the potential to scale to 1.5 GW. Cloverleaf’s project page places the site near the junction of US Highway 80 and Alabama Highway 21 at Burkville, roughly six miles southwest of Montgomery. Lambda has not yet provided the number of buildings or their size, but earlier reports describe about 3.01 million square feet of buildings, including four data buildings of 720,000 square feet each, a 100,000 square foot warehouse and a 30,000 square foot office on 800 acres.
Lambda is also making commitments to the local community. Working with Cloverleaf, it is investing $10 million through a Community Benefits Agreement with the Central Alabama Community Foundation. The company has committed to paying the full cost of power and grid infrastructure for the site, and it will use closed-loop cooling systems to reduce water consumption.
Lambda co-founder and CTO Stephen Balaban said building a successful project starts with building strong relationships in the community. He said the company wants to understand what matters to Lowndes County residents and local leaders, make sure those perspectives inform its approach, and show up as a good neighbor by keeping communication open and building a relationship that lasts well beyond the project’s development.
Thomas Ellis, chairman of the Lowndes County Economic Development Commission, said the county worked hard to secure the investment because it believes in what it will mean for the community’s future. He said Project Red Clay will bring good-paying jobs, create opportunities for local businesses and provide lasting resources to improve schools, roads and essential services, and that it gives the county the ability to shape its own future and create opportunities for generations to come.
Founded in 2012, Lambda offers GPU-based cloud compute and operates out of 15 data centers across the United States, according to its website, with a goal of reaching gigawatts of compute by 2030. Microsoft and Anthropic are known customers. In September, the company announced plans for a data center in Chouteau, Mayes County, Oklahoma, and the Alabama campus adds a second large project to its pipeline. Data Center Dynamics also reports that Lambda is set to go public through an IPO in the near future.
The scale puts Red Clay in a small group of announced AI campuses measured in gigawatts. A site that begins at 1 GW and can grow to 1.5 GW is built for the kind of dense GPU clusters that train and serve the largest models, and a $33.1 billion estimate reflects the cost of the buildings, the power systems and the hardware inside them.
For Alabama, the project represents one of the largest private investments announced in the state. For the AI infrastructure market, it reflects demand for dedicated GPU capacity at gigawatt scale, and the commitment to cover power and grid costs speaks to one of the most closely watched questions in data center development today, who pays for the electricity infrastructure that large AI campuses require.
Regulatory approval for the power supply and the start of construction are the next milestones, and further details on the final campus design are expected as the project moves through approvals.
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