Xalant · Technical FAQ
Reference · Frequently asked
Technical FAQ
Plain answers about how a Xalant campus is designed, what stage each part of it is at, and where the figures behind it will come from. Where a number is not yet cleared, the answer says so instead of guessing.
An answer that rests on somebody else’s published material links to it. An answer that rests on our own design basis says that too, so you can tell the two apart.
Xalant
Xalant, and what stage it is at
The questions a first-time reader asks, answered before the technical ones.
- What is Xalant?
Xalant is being built to develop self-sufficient campuses that put compute, the generation that powers it and the link that carries its traffic on one site, under one contract. Three operating companies cover the three parts: Xalant Edge for the data centre, Xalant Power for generation, Xalant Communications for the link out.
- Is Xalant operating anywhere yet?
Yes. Xalant is in strart-up mode with plans for its 1st POC site being developed.
- Why three companies rather than one?
Because the three parts are bought, permitted and staffed differently, and because a tenant should be able to take one of them without taking all three. The campus design is what makes them one thing on the ground; the company structure is what keeps each of them answerable for its own stage.
- Where do the numbers on this site come from?
One file. Every figure on every page is read from a registry in this website's own repository, and an entry only renders once it carries the source it came from and the date that source was read. A figure that has not met that standard renders as nothing at all, which is why some sentences here are written without a number you might expect to find in them.
- What does it mean when a page says a market is in the pipeline?
It means the market is named, its stage is stated and the work on it is real, but no facility exists there. South Oregon is the proof-of-concept market, targeted for Q1 2027; Milwaukee, Pennsylvania and North Georgia are planned. Markets in the pipeline are described at state level until a site exists, because naming a county implies land.
- And what is a target geography?
A place we want to build in eventually, and nothing more than that.
- Does Xalant have partners or customers it can name?
Not yet, and the absence is deliberate rather than coy. A partner badge is a commercial assertion about another company and it publishes only with that company's own approval, so this site lists technology references — the equipment and platforms a campus is designed around — separately from agreements, and the agreements list is empty.
- Who do I talk to, and about what?
One address, info@xalant.net, reaches everyone. The contact page sorts an enquiry by what it is about — a site, a power stack, coverage, a partnership, investor relations or press — so it arrives with the right context attached. There is no phone number or postal address published on this site yet, because neither is confirmed.
Xalant Edge
Edge — the data centre
Halls, cooling, repeatability and what can actually be ordered today.
- What makes a data centre an edge data centre?
Distance. An edge site is placed close to where the work happens rather than in a distant metro campus, so the round trip between the machine asking and the machine answering is short. Nothing else about it is special: it is a hall, a cooling loop and a power feed, sited for latency instead of for cheap land next to a trunk route.
- What is an edge-in-a-box, and what is it not?
It is the smallest repeatable unit of the design: a factory-built enclosure holding racks, cooling and switchgear, delivered to a prepared pad and commissioned there rather than constructed on site. It is not a shipping container with air conditioning bolted to it, and it is not a product you can order today — it is the unit the first build is designed to prove.
- How long does a build take?
The first one takes a controlled stretch of months, because it is where every decision gets settled. Every site after it is designed as a repeat of that settled drawing set, plus whatever local approval takes in that jurisdiction — and local approval is excluded from the build duration on purpose, because it is the part nobody controls.
- Is the cooling air or liquid?
Both, chosen by what the rack is doing. Ambient free cooling is the design basis wherever the climate allows it, because a site that can reject heat to the outside air for much of the year spends less of its incoming power on cooling. Racks dense enough to need it are designed for direct-to-chip liquid cooling instead.
- Does a Xalant site need a grid connection?
No, and that is the whole point of the design. Generation sits on the pad, so the campus is not waiting in an interconnection queue for permission to exist. A grid connection is welcome where one is available and is treated as a second source rather than as the first one.
- Can I reserve capacity before a site is built?
You can start the conversation, and for the proof-of-concept market that is the conversation worth having now. What you cannot do is buy capacity from a facility that does not exist, so nothing on this site takes an order or quotes a price. The estimator on these pages sizes a requirement; it does not price one.
- What certifications does a Xalant site hold?
None, because no site exists to certify. Where a page names a standard — a resilience tier, a fire or electrical code, an information-security audit — it names it as a target the design is being held to before a first tenant moves in, never as a certificate already issued.
Xalant Power
Power — the generation
Why generation sits on the pad, and the order the three rungs arrive in.
- Why generate on site instead of buying from the grid?
Because the wait is the problem, not the price. A new large load joins an interconnection queue whose length is set by a transmission operator's planning cycle, and that cycle is measured in years in much of the United States. Generation on the pad is how a campus reaches power on a schedule it controls.
- What is bridge power?
The generation that carries a site from commissioning until something cheaper and cleaner is in the ground beneath it. In the Xalant design that is an engine package burning LPG, specified with redundancy so a single unit can be taken out for service without the hall noticing, and able to accept a hydrogen blend as supply develops.
- Why hydrogen, and in what form?
As a blend into the same engines, not as a separate plant. Blending displaces part of the fuel without changing the machine, which keeps the fuel decision reversible while hydrogen supply and price are both still moving. Nothing on this site describes a hydrogen facility, because there is not one.
- What does enhanced geothermal actually mean?
It means making a reservoir where nature did not leave one. Conventional geothermal needs hot rock that is already permeable and already wet; an enhanced system drills into hot dry rock, creates the flow paths, and circulates water through them. It widens the map of where geothermal is possible, and it is a project concept on this site rather than a well.
- Is Xalant building a nuclear reactor?
No. A fluoride-salt small modular reactor is the long-term rung of the power ladder for sites where geothermal is not available, and at this stage that is a sequencing decision rather than a project. No reactor vendor has an agreement with Xalant, no site has been selected for one, and no licensing application of any kind has been filed.
- How would a reactor be licensed, and by whom?
In the United States a power reactor is licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, either through a two-step construction permit and operating licence or through a combined licence. Where this site describes that pathway it describes the regulator's process and quotes the vendor's own published position on its design, with the date each page was read.
- Where does battery storage fit?
Between the generation and the hall, smoothing the step changes and covering a transfer between sources. It is storage sized for ride-through rather than for running a site overnight, and the phase-one figure is held in the stats registry until it has a named basis.
- What happens to the waste heat?
It is the part of the design most likely to earn its keep locally, and it is also the part that depends entirely on who is next door. A campus rejecting heat beside a greenhouse, a fish farm or a district loop is a different proposition from one rejecting it to the air. Nothing is committed, because nothing is built.
Xalant Communications
Communications — the link out
Ground stations, what a pad needs, and what Xalant does and does not hold.
- What does a satellite ground station actually do?
It is the doorway between a constellation and the terrestrial internet. Traffic coming down from the satellites lands on its antennas and goes onto fibre from there, and traffic going the other way does the same in reverse. A constellation with no ground station near you is a constellation whose traffic has to travel a long way before it reaches the network it is trying to get to.
- How many ground stations are there?
We do not publish a count, and that is a deliberate change from the figure this site used to carry. Station counts move constantly, the operators publish them unevenly, and a number with no citable source and no date attached is worse than no number. What is stable enough to say is the shape: coverage depends on ground stations being spread across a territory rather than concentrated at its edges, and large parts of the interior of the United States are thin.
- What technology is in one?
Phased-array antennas that steer electronically rather than mechanically, a fibre route out to an exchange, and redundancy on both the power and the network side so that losing one element does not take the station down. The antennas are the visible part; the site preparation and the power behind them are most of the work.
- Why does site selection matter so much for a ground station?
Because two things have to be true at once, and they pull in opposite directions. The antennas need a clear, low view of the sky in the directions the satellites pass, which favours open ground away from terrain and structures. The station also needs a short path to an exchange and to reliable power, which favours being near something. Finding both on one parcel is the selection problem.
- What is Xalant's role in all this?
Siting, power, integration and operations. We find and prepare the ground, bring the generation that keeps a station up, integrate the equipment on the pad and take on running it once a station is live. What we do not do is manufacture the space segment or resell somebody else's subscription.
- What licensing is involved, and does Xalant hold any of it?
An earth station in the United States is authorised under the Federal Communications Commission's satellite rules, and the filing is a step in a deployment schedule rather than a thing Xalant holds. No application has been filed and no authorisation is held. Where a page describes the step, it describes the regulator's own process.
- Is satellite backhaul a replacement for fibre?
No. It is what lets a site open before the trench arrives, and what remains when the trench is cut. A mature campus is designed for both, with fibre as the primary path once it exists.
Not answered here?
The glossary defines every term these answers use. If the question is about a specific market, a specific load or a specific site, it is a conversation rather than an entry on this page.