‘A lot of rumors’: Mason County residents meet, discuss plans to fight data center

‘A lot of rumors’: Mason County residents meet, discuss plans to fight data center

A meeting happened March 17, 2026, for residents to discuss the plans by Nscale, a startup backed by Nvidia and supported by Microsoft, to build a large data center known as the Monarch Compute Campus north of Point Pleasant, Mason County, West Virginia that would rely on its own gas-burning power plant. Nscale describes the Monarch Compute Campus as one of the world’s largest AI factories.