Billions of dollars are pouring into Wyoming. Crusoe Energy’s “Project Jade,” a 1.8-gigawatt artificial intelligence data center campus in Laramie County, could scale to 10 gigawatts and represent a total investment approaching $50 billion. Meta is building an AI data center in Cheyenne. Related Digital broke ground last fall on a 302-megawatt campus projected to generate over $250 million in tax revenue in its first 15 years. By one measure, Wyoming already has more than three times as many data centers per capita as California.
Opinion
Gov. Mark Gordon has called data centers “a great use of our energy” and “a fantastic addition to our tax base.” He is right that Wyoming’s cool climate, cheap land, abundant energy and business-friendly tax structure make it a natural home for this industry. But there is a question no one is answering with sufficient urgency: Who will staff these facilities, and who will secure them?
Data center construction creates hundreds of temporary jobs. Related Digital’s Cheyenne project will employ roughly 700 construction workers, but only about 40 permanent positions once operational. The permanent roles that matter most for Wyoming’s long-term future are in cloud operations, cybersecurity, network engineering and AI infrastructure management. These are skilled positions requiring targeted training, and Wyoming has no statewide pipeline to produce them.
The numbers are sobering. Only about 37% of University of Wyoming alumni from the past two decades still live in the state. The director of UW’s Center for Blockchain and Digital Innovation has noted that approximately 75% of graduates leave Wyoming. Only about half of Wyoming high school graduates pursue higher education at all. Meanwhile, the state’s population growth is projected to be driven almost entirely by residents aged 45 and older, while the working-age cohort shrinks.
Nationally, the cybersecurity workforce gap continues to widen. CyberSeek, a joint initiative of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and CompTIA, calculates a supply-to-demand ratio of just 74% — meaning roughly one in four cybersecurity positions goes unfilled. Every data center Wyoming builds is a target requiring constant defense, and every AI system those centers run introduces new attack surfaces demanding specialized expertise.
Wyoming has a history of moving first. It was the first territory to grant women the right to vote, the first state to pass comprehensive blockchain legislation and the first to issue a state stable token. Its Select Committee on Blockchain, Financial Technology and Digital Innovation Technology began examining AI governance. Sen. Cynthia Lummis introduced the RISE Act in 2025 to establish AI professional responsibility standards. And when the federal “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” included a 10-year moratorium on state AI regulation, Gov. Gordon joined a bipartisan coalition of governors that helped kill the provision by a 99-to-1 Senate vote.
These are encouraging signals. But legislation without workforce infrastructure is a chassis without an engine.
Three policy steps would make an immediate difference. First, tie data center tax incentives to workforce development commitments. If a company receives favorable tax treatment to build in Wyoming, it should fund IT certification training, apprenticeships, or partnerships with UW and the state’s community colleges. Second, invest in accelerated cybersecurity and cloud technology training pathways. Industry certifications can be earned in weeks, not years. Stackable credentials in cloud computing, network administration and AI operations can move Wyomingites into high-paying careers without requiring a four-year degree. Third, integrate workforce readiness into the select committee’s expanding mandate as it broadens its scope to emerging technologies.
Wyoming has been here before. Coal built communities across the Powder River Basin, but the state learned the hard way what happens when an extractive industry declines without a plan for the people it employed. Data centers need not repeat that pattern,but only if Wyoming treats workforce development as an essential component of its technology strategy — not an afterthought.
The data center billions are arriving. The workforce plan should not be far behind.