Texas is a world leader in renewable energy. Easy permitting, lots of space, lots of existing grid infrastructure from the o&g industry.

My kneejerk response was to point to the incoming administration, but the fact Stargate has been in the works for more than a year now says to me it's because of tax credits.

Lots of back door deals. Just expect more government things put in TX just like the Army built that place in Austin, when we have plenty of dead bases that could be reused

Natural gas to power the turbines while the nuclear plant are built, I guess. Also is Texas more open to large-scale development than elsewhere?

It's where the energy is for this project.

This is unfortunately paywalled but a good writeup on how the datacenter came to be: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/why-openai-and-oracl...

Probably for the same reason that Silcon Valley has been moving there slowly and quietly for a while now.