Legacy Power Capital pitches Nolen Nexus, a mixed-use AI compute model, at Utah event

Rob Miller, CEO of Legacy Power Capital and lead of the Nolen Nexus project, told attendees that the idea for the venture was hatched at the Warnock Engineering Building at the University of Utah and grew from partnerships with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NVIDIA.

"We conceived this idea of partnership between Hewlett Packard Enterprise, University of State, our friends at NVIDIA about bringing an unprecedented large AI capability to the state," Miller said. He described the effort as "the first node in this national computational grid between R1s and research and industry to accelerate AI use as a production workload."

Miller said he recently left HPE to join Legacy Power Capital to pursue a strategy that integrates AI infrastructure with real estate development: "we need to find this thesis that brings AI and integrates it with real estate development, where people live, where people work, where people play, and make it a part of how you enhance the value of real estate." An unidentified presenter at the same session characterized Utah's effort as a "marquee event" other markets can emulate.

The presentation emphasized infrastructure limits and environmental trade-offs. Miller warned that "gigawatt sized data centers are could be electrically disruptive. They could be water disruptive," and said the project is pursuing "net neutral" technical approaches with Hewlett Packard Enterprise to avoid those disruptions. He cited a target range of "loads that are 5 to 50 megawatts" intended to be "non disruptors to the grid."

Speakers described the development model as a kind of "urban rejuvenation" combining multifamily housing, hotels and enterprise compute so data is both created and retained within local mixed-use ecosystems. The unidentified presenter described the approach as providing "best in class solutions all the way through the enterprise stack" and said the model is intended to help cities capture economic benefits from AI deployment.

There were no formal votes or policy decisions recorded during the presentation. Miller closed by inviting attendees to a sponsor-hosted cocktail hour at the Hyatt Regency and thanking local partners: "The state of Utah has invested, you know, has invested and embraced this kid from Ohio," he said.

The session presented a private-sector plan for colocating enterprise compute with real estate and framed Utah's public–private collaboration as a model other states might study. No formal commitments or public approvals were announced during the session; next steps were described as continued partnership and outreach with universities and industry.