Two proposed artificial intelligence data centers, one in Limón and one in Bagaces, would together need electricity on a scale that Costa Rica’s current grid plans do not contemplate. The Limón project also cites a water supply large enough to serve more people than live in its host area. Yet neither project has identified the investors who would finance it.
The larger of the two is the Quantum AI Free Zone Campus, promoted by Quantum Development Inc. on a property of about 42 hectares (104 acres) in Limón’s central canton. Its promotional material describes seven data center buildings, a dedicated 230-kilovolt substation and up to 200 megawatts of computing capacity for AI training and high-performance computing, built in three phases with full power delivery targeted for late 2027. The company says the campus would draw mainly on the national grid, with on-site thermal generators as backup.
The second is the Palo Negro AI & HPC Campus in Bagaces, Guanacaste, promoted by COSFIN Energía S.A. and first announced in November 2025. It proposes its own 120 megawatts of renewable generation, 80 MW of solar and 40 MW of wind, backed by battery storage, and says it will use closed-loop cooling that does not evaporate water. The project remains at the prefeasibility stage.
The scale becomes clear against national figures. Esteban Chanto Sánchez, who leads the information and communication technology chair at the State Distance University (UNED), estimated that if the Limón campus’s 200 MW were all computing equipment running at 90% of capacity, with typical cooling and power overhead, it would consume about 1,892 gigawatt hours a year. That equals roughly 14.6% of Costa Rica’s 2025 electricity demand, though UNED stressed the figure is a scenario to show scale, not a consumption forecast.
Palo Negro has not published a consumption figure, however, a 120 MW campus running around the clock would use roughly 1,050 gigawatt hours a year, about 8% of national demand. Together, the two projects could need nearly a quarter of what our entire country consumes today, a share comparable to the per-capita electricity use of more than a million Costa Ricans. The two host cantons have about 118,000 residents between them.
Palo Negro’s promise of self-supply also has a gap since solar and wind plants do not produce around the clock, while AI servers do, and at typical Guanacaste output levels 120 MW of those plants would generate well under half of what a campus that size needs. The promoters have asked the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) whether it could supply the campus, according to Bagaces Mayor Alonso González.
That matters because the grid is already under scrutiny. Earlier this month, the Comptroller General’s Office warned that ICE’s 2024-2034 transmission expansion plan was built on a low-demand scenario projecting growth near 2% a year. The Competitiveness Promotion Council, a business-backed policy group, puts its base case at 2.8% and says growth could exceed 3.5% under scenarios that include AI and data center expansion.
The same audit found transmission projects running up to 6.6 years behind schedule, the worst being the Nicoya Peninsula reinforcement in Guanacaste, and final grid connection requests taking an average of 324 days, nearly 11 months, to resolve. The following day, ICE’s board dissolved the planning and sustainability directorate of its electricity business and transferred its duties to the transmission division. ICE maintains the system is operating normally, reported transmission availability above 99.7% in 2025 and says there is no risk of shortage.
Water may be the more immediate local concern as Quantum’s own materials cite about 350 liters per second (roughly 92 gallons per second) of municipal water, supplemented by wells. That is about 30 million liters (7.9 million gallons) a day, enough at typical household consumption for some 150,000 people, in a canton of around 92,500 residents that already struggles to supply drinking water.
Former Education Minister Leonardo Garnier has noted that the figure is close to the entire intake of the Bananito River, one of Limón’s main sources. Chanto cautioned that the number reflects advertised availability rather than confirmed consumption, which will depend on the cooling technology the campus uses.
In Bagaces, where arsenic contamination and water deliveries by tanker truck are recent memories, residents protested the data center proposal outside the municipal building. The Costa Rican Federation for Environmental Conservation (FECON) says there is no public information on how much water Palo Negro would use or where it would come from. González says no project documents have been formally submitted to the municipality.
Beyond resources, basic questions about who stands behind the projects remain unanswered. Quantum Development Inc. held free zone status from December 2018 until the Foreign Trade Ministry revoked it in May 2026, although the project website still advertises free zone tax benefits.
The property’s environmental viability from the National Environmental Technical Secretariat (SETENA), first issued in 2017 and reiterated in later resolutions, covers only groundwork such as streets, sidewalks and storm drainage, not buildings. Environmental records flag wetlands, forest cover and a nearby aquifer on the Limón site, and the National Emergency Commission lists part of the property within flood-prone areas.
The Limón municipality announced on social media that the project had environmental clearance, but SETENA’s public records show no data center filing under the company’s name or corporate ID. The company describes its intended partners as hyperscale operators, infrastructure funds and strategic partners, suggesting financing is still being sought. No shareholders or executives have been publicly named, and the company has not responded to questions from local media.
COSFIN Energía has a public spokesman, Stellio Bertossi, but has not disclosed its shareholders or financial partners. Costa Rica’s registry of beneficial owners is not open to the public, so neither company’s ultimate owners can be confirmed through public records.
Limón Mayor Ana Matarrita McCalla says the Quantum project is still at the stage of being introduced to the community and that the municipality will enforce environmental law. Supporters argue AI infrastructure could bring investment and skilled jobs to regions that badly need them.
But until the backers, the real power and water figures and the permits are on the table, residents of both areas are being asked to weigh projects whose owners they cannot name.
