Monolith seeks to build data center in Hallam, application to be submitted by mid-July

A New Data Center Push in Nebraska

Monolith, a Lincoln-based energy and materials company, is moving forward with plans to build a data center on its Olive Creek Campus in Hallam, Nebraska. According to local reporting, the company expects to submit applications for the first phase of the project by mid-July. If approved, this would mark the second data center site in Lancaster County, underscoring the steady creep of large-scale computing infrastructure into the American Midwest.

Notably, Monolith is reportedly eyeing Crusoe Energy Systems as its prospective partner for the buildout — a detail that ties this local zoning story to a much larger national narrative about the capital and infrastructure race behind artificial intelligence.

Why Crusoe Matters

Crusoe has become one of the more closely watched players in the AI infrastructure boom. The company specializes in building and operating the massive data centers needed to train and run AI systems, often colocating them near energy sources — an approach that aligns with Monolith's own background in energy and industrial operations. Separate reporting from Bloomberg indicates Crusoe is in active talks to raise as much as $3 billion in a new funding round that could triple its valuation. Investors reportedly expect the company to be valued near $30 billion, a dramatic jump from the roughly $10 billion valuation it held as recently as October.

While the terms haven't been finalized and sources cautioned that the details remain private, the scale of the potential raise signals just how much capital is flowing into firms that supply the physical backbone of AI — the data centers, power infrastructure, and compute capacity that large language models and other AI systems depend on.

Connecting Local and National Trends

On their own, these two stories cover different scales: one is a local land-use and economic-development matter in a small Nebraska community, the other a high-finance venture story about one of the hottest infrastructure firms in tech. But taken together, they illustrate how the AI boom is reshaping investment decisions from Wall Street down to rural county planning offices.

If Monolith's application moves forward and Crusoe is confirmed as a partner, Hallam would become a small but telling example of how AI-driven demand for compute power is pushing data center development into new geographies — often places with access to cheap energy, land, and local incentives. Meanwhile, Crusoe's fundraising talks suggest investors are betting heavily that this kind of infrastructure buildout will continue accelerating, even as questions persist about long-term demand, energy consumption, and the sustainability of AI's rapid infrastructure expansion.

Neither story confirms a finalized deal — the Hallam project still awaits formal applications, and Crusoe's valuation and funding terms remain undetermined. But together, they offer an early snapshot of how local development plans and global AI investment trends are becoming increasingly intertwined.