What should Texans understand about the state’s rapid economic growth?
Many people see packed highways, busy small towns, and constant construction and assume Texas is just getting more crowded. But what if the bigger story is not simply population growth – it is the scale of economic development, infrastructure investment, and innovation reshaping the future of the state?
In this episode of Retire in Texas, Darryl Lyons explores the forces driving Texas’ continued expansion and why that growth matters for residents, business owners, and investors alike. He shares personal observations from a trip through small-town Texas before zooming out to explain how Texas has continued to lead the nation in economic development. Darryl unpacks several major initiatives that highlight where the state may be headed next, including large-scale chip manufacturing tied to artificial intelligence, a major new refinery project in Brownsville, and the rise of autonomous trucking operations taking shape in Texas.
You’ll learn:
• Why Texas has remained a national leader in economic development.
• How growth is reshaping small towns, infrastructure, and local communities.
• What major projects in chips, energy, and autonomous vehicles could mean for the future of the state.
• Why energy independence and refining capacity remain important economic themes.
• How business owners can view Texas growth as an opportunity rather than a threat.
• Why long-term investors may want to pay attention to the industries helping drive Texas forward.
Whether you are a longtime Texas resident, a business owner navigating a changing local economy, or an investor trying to better understand where future growth may come from, this episode offers perspective on the innovation, expansion, and economic momentum continuing to shape Texas.
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Transcript:
Hey, this is the Darryl Lyons, CEO and Co-Founder of PAX Financial Group. And you’re listening to Retire in Texas. This information is general in nature only. It’s not intended to provide specific investment, tax, or legal advice. Visit PAXFinancialGroup.com for more information. So, I was taking my son. He’s 20 years old and a young man, an awesome, awesome kid, young man.
But I wanted to spend some time with him. So, I was like, let’s go mountain biking. For those that don’t know, I had shoulder surgery, because of a mountain biking accident a long time ago. So, I don’t know if it was the wisest move, but I was very careful, and I want to spend time with them.
And we were going to kayak down to Rockport, but the wind was bad. So, we decided, let’s go up to a place called Spider Mountain, which I live in San Antonio. I live in New Braunfels, so it’s beautiful spring drive up to Burnet, Texas. And we’re driving up there, and when you drive up there, you go through Blanco, Marble Falls, Johnson City, and some of the just beautiful small towns in Texas.
And when I’m driving up there, I’m noticing, like the gas stations or the restaurants have lines out the door. There’s construction signs everywhere. I mean, it is really cool. Now, everyone in small towns, we all complain that, you know, it’s losing its charm, and I get that. But this thing is inevitable. It’s coming. And, you know, people, you know, look at Dripping Springs.
If you’re not familiar with that town, there’s overflow there from Austin as people leave the cities to find a different pace and it’s good and bad. I mean, we just have to kind of deal with this and what the point in this show is telling you what’s going on in Texas is pretty insane. Texas. So, I want to talk about Texas growth.
It’s still absolutely dominating. Like the Spurs will dominate the next decade. Yes. Huge Spurs fan. You probably already know that by now, but Spurs will dominate the next decade, just like Texas is dominating. And my hope is Texas will continue to dominate. There is an economic development is something that I was part of at Brooks City Base years ago.
And economic development is the kind of the definition of building cities and communities and all the things that go in that like finding businesses to support the population and putting the infrastructure in place and developing strategic plans and when I was working in Brooks City Base was a wonderful thing to do. I was really just it’s a great time in my life to learn.
Don Jakeway led that initiative for many years. And so, I was kind of learning from him what economic development was all about. So, I have an appreciation for when somebody says economic development, because I know there’s a lot of pieces involved, and it’s really a community combined effort, both the local city and the state and the county and the local community and the school districts and everything highways, everything.
So, when somebody says economic development, there’s just a lot of people involved. So, Texas for 14 years in a row, has been number one in the nation for economic development. That’s 14, that’s like 14 Spurs championship banners. It’s huge. It’s dominance. 14th year in a row and, in 2025, Texas launched 1400 economic development projects.
The second place was Illinois was 680. So not even close. Texas is dominating. And these small towns that I’m enjoying, the blue bonnets and the barbecue and all of that is changing. Good and bad is just change. I mean, you just don’t. You just don’t wait, you know, raise your fist and sit on your front porch with an iced tea time telling, slow down.
I used to be, we used to love this place, and it’s just not like that anymore. Texas is growing now. Don’t get too frustrated. There’s still plenty of land. I was having a conversation with my son on the way back. We’re like, hey, what happens if there’s too many people? I’m telling you, if you haven’t been to Big Bend, there’s plenty of land in Texas, but it’s growing.
So, I want to talk about that growth a little bit and talk about some of the things that are going on now. This is interesting. Not, I think, from three perspectives. First, if you’re resident of Texas or moving to Texas, this is really important. Second, if you’re doing business in Texas, I think this is something you can dig into.
And then last, I think even as an investor or somebody who invest long term for the stock, through using stocks to accumulate and save wealth and do those things with stock market, all that this conversation today, I think has relevance for all of those different interests. But there’s resident, small business owner, or just simply an investor.
So, let’s unpack three different things that are going on in Texas that I think will add color to the growth. Let me see which one do I want to start with. I’m going to start with Elon Musk. Why not? Have you all heard of Terafab? It’s a massive chip manufacturing initiative.
Excuse me. It’s potentially going to be in Texas to still a kind of a maybe, but these chips are being used to be able to be the backbone of artificial intelligence. And you got to manufacture these chips. And so, there’s a lot that goes into that. And a lot of times we use Taiwan Semiconductor, but really trying to move a lot of the manufacturing of chips into the United States, but specifically Texas.
And Elon Musk really likes having a huge chip manufacturing plant in Texas, but not just for today. I mean, what Elon Musk is talking about is chips that would be used for autonomous driving and humanoid robots. And even this is where it gets crazy, space-based computing, which is totally crazy. But imagine having these big warehouses that store data in outer space.
And so, he’s estimating and if you look it up, it’s a $300 billion project. It’s his quotes, not mine. They have a bunch of wild and crazy things that they want to do. And where do they want to do it? Well, they want to do it in Texas. Now, there’s all types of things that might be going through your head.
First of all, you might think Elon Musk is crazy. I don’t think anybody argues with that. But it is an ambition that is relevant today. And technology’s moving so fast. The beauty of all of this is when people think about doing these things, they think of, where am I going to do it? I’m going to do it in Texas.
All kinds of factors to consider. What does energy usage look like when they put these data centers up? You’ve probably seen some of these data centers now. In fact, I didn’t see any on my drive up to Burnet, but I did when I was driving up to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I did see some data centers out there and any other big blocks of, you know, buildings, and they do suck energy.
So, water and resources. So, you’ve got to think about that now. There’re some innovative things that are happening to be able to be efficient in the use of water, using wastewater versus drinking water and things like that. Of course. Environmental impact, a lot of considerations there. And then just if you think about, you know, the resources and space, what does it look like in the skyline to see a bunch of data centers kind of orbiting space?
So, all kinds of weird things to think about. And maybe it’s worth you guys unpacking a little bit more. My main point is that we’ve got a guy named Elon Musk who’s a visionary. May or may not do it, but if he does, he’s going to do it in Texas, and I don’t blame him. So that’s pretty cool.
I want to let you guys know about that. Again, whether it might materialize or not, who knows? But the other thing I wanted to mention is another initiative. Let me talk about this one that, I’ve got several here. Yeah, let me talk about the Brownsville one. Have you heard about the Brownsville one yet?
So, it’s my thesis that we wouldn’t have issues in Ukraine and Iran if Russia didn’t get rich. Hear me out. And you can look this up and do your due diligence. But because Europe went so clean energy so fast, it didn’t mean the demand for fossil fuels stopped. The demand still stayed globally, but the supply of fossil fuels stopped in Europe and shifted over to Russia.
And so, Russia was able to build a lot of wealth. And of course, then being a trading partner with Iran created a lot of wealth in Russia, and Iran gave them the capital to be able to do some of the things and the nefarious things that they’re doing today. That’s why having energy independence has been so important as an initiative for the United States.
And with everything going on in Iran, the reason that oil hasn’t I mean, it is freaking out a little bit, but hasn’t completely been out of control is because we are more energy independent than ever before. Had we been more dependent globally, outside of the US, then I think we would have seen our gas prices skyrocket.
So, I’m thankful that we have the resources here not only to capture natural gas, but also and not just natural gas, but oil in general. But also refine it. Now, here’s the challenge, though. We haven’t built a refinery since the 70s. I didn’t know that we have not built a refinery since the 70s. What are we doing?
Well, that’s changing. Another $300 billion refinery is happening in Brownsville, Texas. So, you know, the United States produces a lot of light shale oil, and they do it through fracking. And you’ve seen it in Kennedy, in Carson City, the Eagle Ford Shales, the one that we know a lot of. And then you get that out of the ground by doing horizontal drilling, you pull it up, and then you got to send it to a pipeline to a refinery.
Now, a lot of the refineries have capacity constraints. And so, putting a $300 billion refinery in Brownsville, Texas, is a huge step towards unlocking the potential for us to continue our path of energy independence. It’s actually going to be done. I don’t know how this came about, but it’s actually going to be done in a partnership with an Indian company called Reliance.
The groundbreaking should happen in 2026. That’s going to again be in Brownsville. I know my friends in the Valley. For those who don’t know, I spent four years down in Harlingen. I lived down there. I actually moved from Boerne to Harlingen, which is a cultural shock. If y’all don’t know Texas, it’s like two different worlds, but Brownsville in the Valley.
I think it’s worth being excited about having this refinery down there. So that’s really cool. That’s another thing that’s happening again, having a fossil fuel-friendly environment, I think is healthy. If you would ask me about my opinion on clean energy and fossil fuels, I like diversification, but I also like what works. I think there’s been a high degree of subsidies on things that just haven’t worked.
And when you have a subsidy in place and things that don’t work, it masks the efficacy of things like solar and wind panels. Not those to me, I think they may have a place in just being diversified. But what we, I think, realize at this point is fossil fuels are here to stay and we’ve got to figure out a way to do it cleaner and more domestic.
And so, this refinery is a huge, huge step towards that. But it just defines the economic development that’s taking place in Texas. The last one I want to mention is autonomous vehicles. You know, California has been the laboratory of autonomous vehicles, where they may have beakers and chemicals that are exploding.
But if California’s been the laboratory, then Texas is the going to be the factory. And we’re going to be able to do it in such a way that no one’s going to be behind the wheel of an 18-Wheeler that’s packed with paper towels and groceries that fill up H-E-B or Kroger’s. And that’s happening.
And you think, well, that’s kind of scary. But keep in mind that statistically, 83% of all truck crashes are caused by human errors. So, even though that I think there’s reason to be concerned about being a truck driver, although I don’t know, because these things do change. The markets have a way of finding and filling in gaps.
People find jobs, and you look historically and how innovation changes marketplaces and people just find new ways. But being a truck driver is scary because the autonomous vehicles, it’ll probably be a supplement for a little while, but, these autonomous vehicles are coming, and Texas is a major player on that. There’s a company called Aurora.
They’re scaling from doing, like ten autonomous trucks, 18 wheelers. I don’t even know if they’re 18 wheelers, but trucks, from ten, and now they’re going to 200. That company’s called Aurora. There’s another one, called Kodiak. They’re already doing autonomous driving. But we’re talking about tens of thousands of deliveries taking place that will, you know, not have a driver.
And so that’s interesting in itself. But the factories that are being developed, they’re being developed in Texas. And so, I just want to share all this with you again, as a resident, as we see our small towns change before our eyes and really, want to raise our fist and slow down. And, you know, I’m that guy.
You know, I love the Texas culture and the barbecues and I don’t, you know, I don’t want every shopping center to have a Panera and a Chick Fil A, and, you know, I want to see the old school barbecue that you go in and there’s license plates on the walls and, you know, you’re not.
It’s just like you smell the barbecue in there. And the people are friendly and they laugh and you’ve got, you know, George Strait playing. You know, you still want that stuff. And we will still have that stuff. But we do have this new innovation coming in, new people. And, the way I look at it is I can definitely express my frustration, but I don’t live there.
I don’t live in that frustration. I recognize this thing is changing and Texas is changing fast. And I think there’s, I think it’s worth taking inventory of both as a resident and if you want to participate and change, you know, play a role in your community, your economic development in the community, oftentimes through the city council.
But there’s plenty of other places and say, and you can tell them, I want to be, I’m going to play a role in economic development. So as a resident, I think there’s an important role for you to play. As a small business owner, this is not a threat. It’s an opportunity. You got to pivot a little bit.
And then finally, as an investor, all these companies I’m talking about, not all of them, but many of them. You can buy and they’ll be in your portfolios. And this is the future of portfolio growth. So exciting times to be in Texas. And I want to encourage you to continue to shake your fist a little bit, but, don’t shake too long.
Embrace the opportunity and look for ways that you can participate in the growth so we can not only enjoy Texas, and all the wonderful roots that we have, but also this economic dominance that we’ll have over the next decade, along with the San Antonio Spurs. Thank you for listening today. And remember, as always, you think different when you think long term. Have a great day.
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