Quite often these stories come down to a "first come, first served" system where you just need to add your name to the list.

Doesn't matter if you don't have money, don't have land, don't have customers, don't have experience in the field.

Getting your name on the list is seen as valuable and transferrable like squatting a domain name.

But sometimes people like the big number, even if it's obviously BS. Makes for a good headline (works both positively and negatively depending on framing) and as leverage for other political motives. It's happened repeatedly for renewbles projects seeking grid connections.

Generally as soon as any common sense limits are applied the vast majority evaporates.

My skepticism of Texas authorities and their quotes in the article makes me think they are taking advantage of this to say "see how many datacentres we protected you from" when actually most never really existed in any true sense. Their buddy's data center will still get built.