OpenAI Expands Stargate Project with Five New AI Data Centers Across the US

OpenAI is building five new Stargate data centers with Oracle and SoftBank | TechCrunch

OpenAI announced on Tuesday that it plans to build five new AI data centers across the United States with partners Oracle and SoftBank through its Stargate project. The new data centers will bring Stargate's planned capacity to seven gigawatts -- enough energy to power more than five million homes. Three of the new sites are being developed with Oracle. They're located in Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; and an undisclosed location in the Midwest. The other two sites are being developed with SoftBank, with one in Lordstown, Ohio and the other in Milam County, Texas. The new Stargate AI data centers are part of OpenAI's massive infrastructure buildout, as the company works to train and serve more powerful AI models. On Monday, OpenAI said it would receive a $100 billion investment from Nvidia to buy the chipmaker's AI processors and build out even more AI data centers.

OpenAI Teams Up With Oracle and SoftBank to Build 5 New Stargate Data Centers

The new sites will boost Stargate's planned capacity to nearly 7 gigawatts -- about equal to the output of seven large nuclear reactors. OpenAI is planning to build five new data centers in the United States as part of the Stargate initiative, the company announced on Tuesday. The sites, which are being developed in partnership with Oracle and SoftBank, bring Stargate's current planned capacity to nearly 7 gigawatts -- roughly the same amount of power as seven large-scale nuclear reactors. "AI is different from the internet in a lot of ways, but one of them is just how much infrastructure it takes," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during a press briefing in Abilene, Texas on Tuesday. He argued that the US "cannot fall behind on this" and the "innovative spirit" of Texas provides a model for how to scale "bigger, faster, cheaper, better." Three of the new sites, in Shackelford County, Texas, Doña Ana County, New Mexico, and a yet-to-be disclosed location in the Midwest, are being developed in partnership with Oracle. The move follows an agreement Oracle and OpenAI announced in July to develop up to 4.5 gigawatts of US data center capacity on top of what the two companies are already building at the first Stargate facility in Abilene. OpenAI claims the new data centers, along with a planned 600 megawatt expansion of the Abilene site, will create more than 25,000 onsite jobs, though the number of workers required to build data centers typically dwarfs the amount needed to maintain them afterwards. The two remaining sites are being helmed by OpenAI and SB Energy, a SoftBank subsidiary that develops solar and battery projects. These are located in Lordstown, Ohio and Milam County, Texas. Stargate is one of several major US technology infrastructure projects that have been announced since President Donald Trump took office at the start of the year. OpenAI said in January that the $500 billion, 10 gigawatt commitment between the ChatGPT maker, SoftBank, Oracle and MGX would "secure American leadership in AI" and "create hundreds of thousands of American jobs." Trump touted the mammoth initiative just two days after he returned to the White House, promising that it would accelerate American progress in artificial intelligence and help the US compete against China and other nations. In July, Trump announced an AI action plan that called for speedy infrastructure development and limited red tape as the US tries to beat other countries in the quest for advanced AI. "We believe we're in an AI race," White House AI czar David Sacks said at the time. "We want the United States to win that race." OpenAI initially framed Stargate as a "new company" that would be chaired by Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son. Now, however, executives close to the project say it's an umbrella brand name used to refer to all of OpenAI's data center projects -- except those developed in partnership with Microsoft. The flagship site in Abilene is primarily owned and operated by Oracle, with OpenAI acting as the primary tenant, according to executives close to the project. The buildout, which is being managed by the data center startup Crusoe, is on track to be completed by mid 2026, sources close to the project say. It is already running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and supporting OpenAI training and inference workloads, those sources add.

OpenAI Expands Stargate With Five New Data Center Sites Across US

OpenAI plans to invest roughly $400 billion to develop five new US data center sites in partnership with Oracle Corp. and SoftBank Group Corp., marking the biggest push yet to fulfill an earlier pledge to spend a half-trillion dollars on artificial intelligence infrastructure in the country. The new locations, spread across Texas, New Mexico and Ohio, will eventually have a capacity of 7 gigawatts of power, or as much as some cities, the companies said Tuesday. The plans were announced by executives from the three tech firms at a press conference in Abilene, Texas, where OpenAI and Oracle have for months been developing the first data center branded as part of Stargate, the joint AI infrastructure initiative. The expansion brings the companies significantly closer to their goal of investing $500 billion in domestic data centers and AI infrastructure over the next four years -- a pledge made by their top executives in the first days after President Donald Trump's return to the White House. The added facilities are also poised to provide substantially more computing capacity to support OpenAI's services, including ChatGPT, which is now used by 700 million people weekly. "We will push on infrastructure as hard as we can because that is what will drive our ability to deliver amazing technology and basic products and services," OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman said at the press conference.

OpenAI Stargate announces five new datacenter sites in US

The Stargate project, the OpenAI-led plan to cover the world with datacenters, has announced plans to construct five new bit barns in the US. The $500 billion project involves OpenAI, Oracle, Softbank, AI investor MGX, and a handful of other technology partners who share the ambition to build hyperscale datacenters to host AI workloads. Oracle has said it will provide the backend support, with Softbank supposedly taking "financial responsibility" for the project, according to the group's January 2025 launch announcement. The five new datacenter sites are in Shackelford County and Milam County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; Lordstown, Ohio; and a mystery site located somewhere in America's Midwest. Together with Stargate's existing site in Abilene, Texas, they'll bring Stargate's combined compute capacity to seven gigawatts over the next three years, OpenAI says. The AI behemoth claims it's on track to have 10GW of commitments secured by the end of this year. "AI can only fulfill its promise if we build the compute to power it. That compute is the key to ensuring everyone can benefit from AI and to unlocking future breakthroughs," OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman enthused in a Tuesday press release. "We're already making historic progress toward that goal through Stargate and moving quickly not just to meet its initial commitment, but to lay the foundation for what comes next," he added. The consortium has also announced a 230 megawatt datacenter for Norway and this month another datacenter complex in the UK's depressed Northeast region during US President Trump's recent state visit. Despite a slow start to the project, the coalition backing it has trumpeted lots of activity and says it has already committed to spend more than $400 billion over the next three years - and may burn through more than its original $500 billion estimate. Among Stargate's spending pledges commitments are a $300 billion payout to Oracle (which is overseeing the Abilene site as well as three of the new ones), and its income includes a $100 billion investment from Nvidia as OpenAI deploys "millions" of its critical GPUs, which provide the computing brainpower to the entire AI datacenter mega-buildout. While OpenAI claims the new sites will create 25,000 onsite jobs, it's noticeably quiet about the costs and impacts of power and water infrastructure needed to get these datacenters running. ®

OpenAI expands Stargate AI project with five US sites

OpenAI has struck agreements to develop five new US data centres, pushing the cost of its AI infrastructure project Stargate to about $400bn, the latest in a series of recent megadeals by the lossmaking start-up. Tuesday's announcement will expand Stargate, whose other backers include SoftBank and US software group Oracle, from a single site in Abilene, Texas, to half a dozen around the country. Stargate's backers have pitched the high-profile infrastructure project as the cornerstone of America's efforts to lead in artificial intelligence and remain ahead of Chinese competition. But OpenAI and its partners must still raise the enormous sums required to fund the sites. OpenAI's chief executive Sam Altman said the group was confident in financing the $400bn commitment at a press conference in Abilene on Tuesday. The massive outlay will require OpenAI to boost its annual revenues far beyond current levels of roughly $13bn, sell more equity and, along with its partners, raise substantial amounts of debt. OpenAI intends to be the customer for all of the new capacity announced on Tuesday, which it needs to train and run its AI models. Its ChatGPT chatbot has raced to 700mn regular users, making it the fastest-growing consumer product of all time. "People will over-invest and lose money, people will under-invest and lose revenue . . . but over the arc that we have to plan over, we are confident that this technology will drive a new wave of unprecedented economic growth," said Altman. The completion of the data centres is expected to take three years, require investment of $400bn and bring Stargate to 7 gigawatts of capacity, against an ultimate goal of 10GW -- roughly the equivalent output of 10 nuclear reactors. Three of the data centres will be developed with Oracle -- in New Mexico, Texas and the Midwest -- forming part of OpenAI's recent deal to purchase $300bn worth of computing power over five years from the software group. Two further projects will be developed in Ohio and Texas in partnership with SoftBank, which has committed to bankroll a large portion of Stargate. "Texas is ground zero for AI," said Texas Senator Ted Cruz, citing the state's low-cost energy and light-touch regulation as providing a model for beating China. "I told Sam, 'bring your whole company here, but leave the damn communists at home'." Stargate, unveiled at the White House in January with President Donald Trump, was originally structured as a $500bn joint venture controlled by OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle and Abu Dhabi sovereign fund MGX. Since then, OpenAI has moved away from a rigid definition of Stargate, with executives at the company using the term to cover any data centre project the company is involved in, including overseas projects in the United Arab Emirates and the UK. An 800-acre site in Abilene, billed as the first Stargate project, was being developed by data centre start-up Crusoe and Oracle months before Stargate was announced. It had originally been considered by Elon Musk as a location for his own AI venture, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. OpenAI's executives estimate that each gigawatt of capacity costs $50bn to develop, roughly two-thirds of which will be spent on chips and networking equipment. The remainder will fund the purchase of land, development of the data centres and other costs. On Monday, OpenAI gave an indication of how it would approach that challenge, announcing a $100bn deal with Nvidia. The $4.3tn chip designer will invest in increments of $10bn as OpenAI develops capacity, in exchange for equity in the company. OpenAI plans to use the long-term commitment from Nvidia to raise cheaper debt, leveraging the chipmaker's backing largely to purchase millions of Nvidia's own chips, according to executives at the company. "As our revenue scales, we can pay as you go," said Altman. "The chips and the systems are a humungous percentage of the cost and its hard to pay that upfront." "What really drives a lot of progress is when people also figure out how to innovate on the financial model and financial instruments," he added.

Sam Altman on OpenAI's $850 billion in planned buildouts: 'People are worried. I totally get that'

ABILENE, Texas -- Sam Altman stood on a patch of hot Texas dirt, the kind that turns to dust storms on dry days and mud slicks after a sudden rain. Behind him stretched the outlines of what will soon be a massive data center complex in the west-central part of the state, where heavy wind often meets extreme heat. It was a fitting backdrop for the OpenAI CEO to unveil what he calls the largest infrastructure push of the modern internet era: a 17-gigawatt buildout in partnership with Oracle, Nvidia, and SoftBank. In less than 48 hours, OpenAI has announced commitments equal to 17 nuclear plants or about nine Hoover Dams. The plan will require the amount of electricity needed to power more than 13 million U.S. homes. The scale is staggering, even for a company that's raised a record amount of private market cash and seen its valuation swell to $500 billion. At roughly $50 billion per site, OpenAI's projects add up to about $850 billion in spending, nearly half of the $2 trillion global AI infrastructure surge HSBC now forecasts. Altman understands the concern. But he rejects the idea that the spending spree is overkill. "People are worried. I totally get that. I think that's a very natural thing," Altman told CNBC on Tuesday from the site of the first of its mega data centers in Abilene. "We are growing faster than any business I've ever heard of before." Altman insisted that the building boom is in response to soaring demand, highlighting the tenfold jump in ChatGPT usage over the past 18 months. He said a network of supercomputing facilities is what's required to maximize the capabilities of AI.

OpenAI and Oracle show off Stargate AI data center in Texas and plan five more elsewhere

ABILENE, Texas (AP) -- The afternoon sun was so hot that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman traded his usual sweater for a T-shirt on the last legs of a Tuesday visit to the massive Stargate artificial intelligence data center complex that will power the future of ChatGPT. Altman announced Tuesday that OpenAI's flagship artificial AI data center in Texas will be joined by five others around the U.S. as the ChatGPT maker aims to make good on the $500 billion infrastructure investment promoted by President Donald Trump earlier this year. Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, said it is building two more data center complexes in Texas, one in New Mexico, one in Ohio and another in a Midwest location it hasn't yet disclosed. But it's the project in Abilene, Texas, that promised to be the biggest of them all, transforming what the city's mayor called an old railroad town. Oracle executives who visited the eight-building complex said it is already on track to be the world's largest AI supercluster once fully built, a reference to the hundreds of thousands of AI chips that will be running in its massive, H-shaped buildings. Altman said, "When you hit that button on ChatGPT, you really don't -- I don't, at least" -- think about what happens inside the data halls used to build and operate the chatbot. He and Oracle's new co-CEO Clay Magouyrk also sought to emphasize the steps they've taken to reduce the complex's environmental effects on a drought-prone region of West Texas, where temperatures hit 97 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday. The complex will require about 900 megawatts of electricity to power the eight buildings, running hundreds of thousands of specialized AI chips. For the first building, each server rack holds 72 of Nvidia's GB200 chips, which are specially designed for the most intensive AI workloads. Each building has about 60,000 of them. One of the buildings is already operating, and a second that Altman and Magouyrk visited Tuesday is nearly complete. OpenAI and Oracle invited media and politicians, including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, to tour the site for the first time Tuesday. "Texas is ground zero for AI," Cruz said. Trump touted Stargate shortly after returning to the White House in January. The partnership said at that time it was investing $100 billion -- and eventually up to $500 billion -- to build large-scale data centers and the energy generation needed to further AI development. Trump called the project a "resounding declaration of confidence in America's potential" under his new administration, though construction on the flagship project in Abilene began last year and had been in planning for years before that. Originally developed to mine cryptocurrency, developers pivoted and expanded their designs to tailor the project to the AI boom sparked by ChatGPT. More than 6,000 workers now commute to the massive construction project each day, in what Mayor Weldon Hurt described as a significant boost to the local economy. "AI WORKERS? HUGE DISCOUNTS" says one hand-made sign for "move-in ready" homes of one to six bedrooms. But Hurt also acknowledged that residents have mixed feelings about the project due to its water and energy effects. The city's chronically stressed reservoirs were at roughly half-capacity on Monday. Residents must follow a two-day-a-week outdoor watering schedule, trading off based on whether their address numbers are odd or even. One million gallons of water from the city's municipal water systems provides an "initial fill" for a closed-loop system that cools the data center's computers, reducing the amount that evaporates. After that initial fill, Oracle expects each of the eight buildings to need another 12,000 gallons per year, which it describes as a "remarkably low figure for a facility of this scale." "These data centers are designed to not use water," Magouyrk said. "All of the data centers that we're building (in) this part of Stargate are designed to not use water. The reason we do that is because it turns out that's harmful for the environment and this is a better solution." The closed-loop system shows that the developer is "taking its impact on local public water supplies seriously," but the overall environmental effect is more nuanced because such systems require more electricity, which also means higher indirect water usage through power generation, said Shaolei Ren, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, who has studied AI's environmental toll. Indeed, the data center complex includes a new gas-fired power plant, using natural gas turbines similar to those that power warships. The companies say the plant is meant to provide backup power for the data halls and is a better option than traditional diesel generators. Most of the power comes from the local grid, which includes a mix of gas with the sprawling wind and solar farms that dot the region. Ren said that "even with emission-reduction measures, the health impacts of essentially turning the data center site into a power plant deserve further study for nearby communities." Arlene Mendler, a Stargate neighbor, said she wished she had more say in the project. "It has completely changed the way we were living," said Mendler, who lives across the street. "We moved up here 33 years ago for the peace, quiet, tranquility. After we got home from work, we could ride horses down the road. It was that type of a place." Now, she doesn't know what to do about the constant cacophony of construction sounds or the bright lights that have altered her nighttime views. The project was essentially a done deal once she found out about it. "They took 1,200 acres and just scraped it to bare dirt," said her husband, Fred Mendler. -- -- - The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP's text archives.

OpenAI's first data center in $500B Stargate project is open in Texas, with sites coming in New Mexico and Ohio

ABILENE, Texas -- OpenAI and Oracle are betting big on America's AI future, bringing online the flagship site of the $500 billion Stargate program, a sweeping infrastructure push to secure the compute needed to power the future of artificial intelligence. The debut site in Abilene, Texas, about 180 miles west of Dallas, is up and running, filled with Oracle Cloud infrastructure and racks of Nvidia chips. The data center, which is being leased by Oracle, is one of the most notable physical landmarks to emerge from an unprecedented boom in demand for infrastructure to power AI. Over $2 trillion in AI infrastructure has been planned around the world, according to an HSBC estimate this week. OpenAI is leading the way. In addition to the $500 billion Stargate project, the startup on Monday announced an equity investment deal with Nvidia that will add an estimated $500 billion worth of data centers in the coming years. Since 2019, Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, providing loads of access to Azure credits. Additionally, OpenAI contracts with smaller cloud companies for additional compute capacity and help operating its infrastructure. One building on the Abilene site is operational while another is nearly complete. The campus has the potential to ultimately scale past a gigawatt of capacity, OpenAI finance chief Sarah Friar told CNBC. That would be enough electricity to power about 750,000 U.S. homes. The data center construction plans are important enough that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang personally engaged in last-minute negotiations with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the weekend to get in on the action, CNBC reported earlier on Tuesday. "People are starting to recognize just the sheer scale that will be required," Friar said. "We're just getting going here in Abilene, Texas, but you'll see this all around the United States and beyond." The scale of the project's construction was necessary to supply the amount of compute required to operate OpenAI's models, Friar said. "What we see today is a massive compute crunch," she said. "There's not enough compute to do all the things that AI can do."

OpenAI's Stargate data center plan adds five new U.S. sites

Why it matters: The push to build massive, power-thirsty data centers is key to winning the AI race. Between the lines: OpenAI made the announcement at its flagship site in Abilene, Texas in partnership with Oracle and Softbank, alongside Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas). * The additional sites will be located in Lordstown, Ohio; Shackelford County, Texas; Milam County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; and an additional site in the Midwest to be named later. * OpenAI said in a blog post that the company is investigating additional sites. The big picture: OpenAI says the new sites put the firm ahead of schedule to lock in its previously announced $500 billion, 10-gigawatt commitment by the end of 2025. * SoftBank CFO Yoshimitsu Goto admitted last month that the Stargate project faced issues with site selection and coordinating stakeholders, putting the project behind schedule. * But OpenAI says Stargate now has $400 billion of the originally announced $500 billion goal lined up over the next three years. What they're saying: "AI can only fulfill its promise if we build the compute to power it," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a company blog post today. * In a separate post on his personal website Altman warned that limiting compute would force society to make choices between competing priorities -- like curing cancer or providing a personalized tutor for "every student on earth." * "If we are limited by compute, we'll have to choose which one to prioritize; no one wants to make that choice, so let's go build," Altman wrote. What's next: OpenAI and its partners say they're still evaluating additional sites and expect to announce the location of the new unnamed Midwest location soon. Go deeper: How is Stargate's $500B getting funded?

OpenAI, Oracle, and Softbank expand Stargate with five new AI data centers | Fortune

In Abilene, Texas -- in the heart of what locals call the Big Country, long defined by ranching and farming and now dotted with wind turbines -- OpenAI and Oracle staged a carefully crafted media showcase on Tuesday, ushering reporters through an 800-acre data center complex packed with tens of thousands of state-of-the-art Nvidia GPUs. The event was a victory lap of sorts, as CEO Sam Altman and Oracle's new co-CEO Clay Magouryk pushed back against critics who have questioned the progress of their high-profile and ambitious "Stargate" AI infrastructure project. At Tuesday's event, the two companies, joined by Japan's SoftBank, announced a big step forward for Stargate, touting an expansion of the Abilene site, as well as plans to build five massive, new data center complexes across the U.S. over the next several years. Altogether, the initiative calls for hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in a project of a mind-boggling scale. In Abilene, alone a crew of 6,400 workers have already moved massive amounts of soil to flatten the hills, and laid down enough fiber optic cable to wrap the Earth 16 times. "We cannot fall behind in the need to put the infrastructure together to make this revolution happen," OpenAI's Altman said during a Q&A with reporters. "What you saw today is just like a small fraction of what this site will eventually be, and this site is just a small fraction or building, and all of that will still not be enough to serve even the demand of ChatGPT," he said, referring to OpenAI's flagship AI product. The buildout attests to the towering expectations surrounding AI, as tech companies like OpenAI, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta race to put in place the infrastructure necessary to power their latest large language models. In July, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company would spend hundreds of billions of dollars building a network of data centers with names like Prometheus and Hyperion to create "superintelligence." Abilene, as well as the newly-announced data centers, are all part of the Stargate project, a half-trillion-dollar joint initiative that OpenAI unveiled in January that aims to create a nationwide backbone for training its ever-larger AI models. Stargate has been touted as a public-private partnership with the Trump administration -- part of a bid to keep AI compute infrastructure in the U.S. and push projects past regulatory hurdles. Among the guests and speakers at the Abilene event on Tuesday were Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Congressman Jodey Arrington, and local dignitaries including the mayor of Abilene and even a county judge. Each of them emphasized Texas' appeal as a hub for AI infrastructure. "Sam, Clay, welcome to Silicon Prairie," Arrington said on stage, referring to the CEOs of OpenAI and Oracle. The five new Stargate projects -- in Texas, New Mexico, Ohio, and in an undisclosed Midwest location -- will bring Stargate's current pipeline to nearly 7 gigawatts and more than $400 billion in investment over the next three years. In the data center world, "gigawatts" are shorthand for how much electricity a facility can draw -- and therefore how much AI compute it can deliver. A 1-gigawatt facility, for instance, requires enough substations, cooling, and transmission to sustain the power demand of nearly a million homes. Until recently, the data center facilities owned and operated by the largest cloud computing companies -- the so-called hyperscalers -- topped out at a few hundred megawatts. But Microsoft and Meta have recently unveiled multi-gigawatt projects in Wisconsin and Louisiana. And in a sign of the ever-increasing stakes in AI arms race, OpenAI and its partners promised Tuesday to reach a 10-gigawatt, $500 billion target by the end of 2025 -- ahead of schedule. Oracle pointed out that the campus in Abilene, Texas is already up and running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), continues to progress rapidly, and is on track to provide OpenAI with the "world's largest supercluster" when fully built. Tuesday's announcement included an expansion in Abilene on another site which will draw 600 megawatts - which could power roughly 450,000-600,000 homes' worth of electricity demand. The new projects -- in Texas, New Mexico, Ohio, and in an undisclosed Midwest location -- will bring Stargate's current pipeline to nearly 7 gigawatts and more than $400 billion in investment over the next three years. That kind of capacity, which can power millions of homes, is measured in power-plant terms: a typical hyperscale cloud campus runs a few hundred megawatts, while Microsoft and Meta have each announced multi-gigawatt projects in Wisconsin and Louisiana. Three of the new sites -- in Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; and an undisclosed Midwestern location -- will be built with Oracle, expanding a July deal to develop up to 4.5 gigawatts of capacity worth more than $300 billion over five years. Two others -- in Lordstown, Ohio, and Milam County, Texas -- will be developed with SoftBank, which has promised "fast-build" facilities that can scale quickly to multiple gigawatts. The five sites emerged from a January site-selection contest that drew more than 300 proposals from 30 states, underscoring how aggressively local governments courted the Stargate project. But Stargate's expansion is certain to draw criticism on multiple fronts. In Abilene and other communities hosting mega AI data centers, residents and activists worry about the trade-offs: billions in tax abatements, the risk of gas-fired generation worsening local air quality, and the likelihood that permanent jobs will number far fewer than the headlines suggest. National energy analysts, meanwhile, warn that multi-gigawatt campuses could strain fragile power grids and lock in huge new demands for water and fossil fuels at a time when utilities are already struggling to keep up with AI's growth. For example, the site in Dona Ana County, New Mexico has garnered mixed reactions, with opponents raising concerns about water usage and pollution, arguing these issues outweigh the economic benefits. According to a county presentation, the project will bring 800 permanent jobs and 2,500 construction jobs over three years. Yesterday, Nvidia announced a letter of intent with OpenAI to deploy GPU-powered systems capable of drawing up to 10 gigawatts of electricity -- the equivalent demand of 7 to 10 million homes -- backed by as much as $100 billion in investment. Altman argued at the press Q&A that the most significant piece of Nvidia's announcement wasn't just the new sites but the financing model behind them. Rather than paying billions for chips up front, OpenAI will be able to spread those costs over time as revenue scales. "We can kind of like pay as we go, like what's on cloud services," he said. "the chips are a humongous percentage of the capex, and it's harder for us to pay for that all up front, because our revenue comes in over the many months that customers run service among those chips. So that really helps projects like this." But when it came to OpenAI's energy demands, Senator Ted Cruz cast the stakes in both geopolitical and local terms. "Message number one: America will beat China in the race for AI," he said. Message number two? "Texas is ground zero for AI," he added. "What do you want when you're building AI data centers? Number one, you want abundant, low-cost energy. Welcome to the great state of Texas."

OpenAI announces five new AI data centres in addition to flagship Texas location

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, announced on Tuesday that it is building five new Stargate AI data centres around the US. The flagship location in Abilene, Texas is being constructed with the centre's environmental impact in mind, and is expected to create 1,700 new jobs. The afternoon sun was so hot that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman traded his usual crewneck sweater for a T-shirt on the last legs of a Tuesday visit to the massive Stargate artificial intelligence data centre complex that will power the future of ChatGPT. OpenAI announced Tuesday that its flagship AI data centre in Texas will be joined by five others around the US as the ChatGPT maker aims to make good on the $500 billion infrastructure investment promoted by President Donald Trump earlier this year. Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank, said it is building two more data centre complexes in Texas, one in New Mexico, one in Ohio and another in a Midwest location it hasn't yet disclosed. But it's the project in Abilene, Texas, that promised to be the biggest of them all, transforming what the city's mayor called an old railroad town. Oracle executives who visited the eight-building complex said it is already on track to be the world's largest AI supercluster once fully built, a reference to its network of hundreds of thousands of AI chips that will be running in its massive, H-shaped buildings. Altman said, "When you hit that button on ChatGPT, you really don't -- I don't, at least -- think about what happens inside the data halls used to build and operate the chatbot." He and Oracle's new co-CEO Clay Magouyrk also sought to emphasise the steps they've taken to reduce the energy-hungry complex's environmental effects on a drought-prone region of West Texas, where temperatures hit 97 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday. "We're burning gas to run this data centre," said Altman, but added that "in the long trajectory of Stargate" the hope is to rely on many other power sources. The complex will require about 900 megawatts of electricity to power the eight buildings and their hundreds of thousands of specialised AI chips. Read moreOpenAI releases ChatGPT-5 as global AI race accelerates One of the buildings is already operating, and a second that Altman and Magouyrk visited Tuesday is nearly complete. Each server rack in those buildings holds 72 of Nvidia's GB200 chips, which are specially designed for the most intensive AI workloads. Each building is expected to have about 60,000 of them. More than 6,000 workers now commute to the massive construction project each day, in what Mayor Weldon Hurt described as a significant boost to the local economy. The campus and nearby expansion will provide nearly 1,700 jobs onsite when fully operational, Oracle said, with "thousands more indirect jobs" predicted to be created. Hand-made signs lining the roads to the centre market "move-in-ready" homes for workers. "AI WORKERS? HUGE DISCOUNTS," says one, promising homes with one to six bedrooms. But Hurt also acknowledged that residents have mixed feelings about the project due to its water and energy needs. The city's chronically stressed reservoirs were at roughly half-capacity this week. Residents must follow a two-day-a-week outdoor watering schedule, trading off based on whether their address numbers are odd or even. One million gallons of water from the city's municipal water systems provides an "initial fill" for a closed-loop system that cools the data centre's computers and keeps the water from evaporating. After that initial fill, Oracle expects each of the eight buildings to need another 12,000 gallons per year, which it describes as a "remarkably low figure for a facility of this scale." "These data centres are designed to not use water," Magouyrk said. "All of the data centres that we're building in this part of Stargate are designed to not use water. The reason we do that is because it turns out that's harmful for the environment and this is a better solution." The closed-loop system shows that the developer is "taking its impact on local public water supplies seriously," but the overall environmental effect is more nuanced because such systems require more electricity, which also means higher indirect water usage through power generation, said Shaolei Ren, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, who has studied AI's environmental toll. Indeed, the data centre complex includes a new gas-fired power plant, using natural gas turbines similar to those that power warships. The companies say the plant is meant to provide backup power for the data halls and is a better option than traditional diesel generators. Most of the power comes from the local grid, sourced from a mix of natural gas with the sprawling wind and solar farms that dot the windy and sunny region. Ren said that "even with emission-reduction measures, the health impacts of essentially turning the data centre site into a power plant deserve further study for nearby communities." Arlene Mendler, a Stargate neighbour, said she wished she had more say in the project that eliminated a vast tract of mesquite shrubland, home to coyotes and roadrunners. "It has completely changed the way we were living," said Mendler, who lives across the street. "We moved up here 33 years ago for the peace, quiet, tranquillity. After we got home from work, we could ride horses down the road. It was that type of a place." Now, she doesn't know what to do about the constant cacophony of construction sounds or the bright lights that have altered her night-time views. The project was essentially a done deal once she found out about it. Read moreThe unlikely success story of tech-giant ASML, the biggest backer of France's Mistral AI "They took 1,200 acres and just scraped it to bare dirt," said her husband, Fred Mendler. The first time most residents heard of Stargate -- at least by that name -- was when Trump announced the project shortly after returning to the White House in January. Originally planned as a facility to mine cryptocurrency, developers had pivoted and expanded their designs to tailor the project to the AI boom sparked by ChatGPT. The partnership said at that time it was investing $100 billion -- and eventually up to $500 billion -- to build large-scale data centres and the energy generation needed to further AI development. More recently, OpenAI signed a deal to buy $300 billion of computing capacity from Oracle. It's a huge bet for the San Francisco-based AI start-up, which was founded as a non-profit. OpenAI and Oracle invited media and politicians, including US Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, to tour the site for the first time Tuesday. Cruz called Texas "ground zero for AI" because if "you're building a data centre, what do you want? No. 1, you want abundant, low-cost energy." Of the other five Stargate data centre projects announced Tuesday, Oracle is working with OpenAI to build one just north-east of Abilene, in Shackelford County, Texas, and another in New Mexico's Doña Ana County. It also said it is working to build one in the Midwest. SoftBank said it has broken ground on two more in Lordstown, Ohio, and in Milam County, Texas. The projects offer OpenAI a way to break out from its long-time partnership with Microsoft, which until recently was the start-up's exclusive computing partner. Altman told The Associated Press his company has been "severely limited for the value we can offer to people." "ChatGPT is slow. It's not as smart as we'd like to be. Many users can't use it as much as they would like," Altman said. "We have many other ideas and products we want to build."

OpenAI Envisions 'Producing a Gigawatt of New AI Infrastructure Weekly', says Sam Altman | AIM

The CEO outlined the company's goals involving AI and computing power, as OpenAI announced five new data centre sites as part of the Stargate Project. OpenAI, on September 23, announced five new AI data centre sites, along with Oracle and SoftBank, in the United States. The announcement is part of the Stargate Project, the $500 billion initiative to build AI infrastructure across the US, led by OpenAI and SoftBank in partnership with Oracle, MGX, Arm, Microsoft and NVIDIA. OpenAI states that the combined capacity from these five new sites brings Stargate to nearly 7 gigawatts (GW) of planned capacity, in addition to ongoing projects with CoreWeave. "This puts us on a clear path to securing the full $500 billion, 10-gigawatt commitment we announced in January by the end of 2025, ahead of schedule," the company said. In July, OpenAI and Oracle signed a deal valued at over $300 billion to develop up to 4.5 GW of Stargate capacity within the next five years. This partnership powers three new sites located across the US, which are expected to deliver 5.5 GW of capacity, including a potential expansion of 600 megawatts (MW) near the 'flagship' Stargate site in Abilene, Texas. The three sites are located in Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; and a site in the Midwest, which is expected to be announced soon. On the other hand, the other two Stargate sites can scale to 1.5 GW of power over the next 18 months. These sites will be developed through a partnership with SoftBank, which is another major partner in the Stargate Project. These two sites are located in Lordstown, Ohio and Milam County, Texas. Recently, OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, penned a blog on his personal website, outlining the trajectory of AI and computing power. "Our vision is simple: we want to create a factory that can produce a gigawatt of new AI infrastructure every week," he said, adding that the execution of this will be "extremely difficult" and could take years to get to the milestone. "Maybe with 10 gigawatts of compute, AI can figure out how to cure cancer. Or with 10 gigawatts of compute, AI can figure out how to provide customised tutoring to every student on earth," Altman added. A few days ago, OpenAI and NVIDIA signed a letter of intent for a partnership to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems for OpenAI's next-generation AI infrastructure. The agreement includes NVIDIA investing up to $100 billion in OpenAI, contingent upon the deployment of each gigawatt of systems. The first gigawatt of capacity is scheduled for deployment in the second half of 2026 on NVIDIA's Vera Rubin platform.

OpenAI to build five more Stargate data centers in the US with Oracle and SoftBank - SiliconANGLE

OpenAI today announced plans to build five new data center sites in the U.S. as part of its Stargate initiative. Launched in January, Stargate is intended to provide the artificial intelligence provider with 10 gigawatts' worth of computing infrastructure. The project is expected to cost $500 billion over four years. OpenAI is partnering with Oracle Corp. on three of the upcoming data center sites. The facilities will be built in Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico and a yet-unspecified Midwest location. OpenAI plans to share more details about the latter project in the near future. According to the New York Times, Oracle will finance the three data center sites and oversee their construction. The database maker reportedly hopes to cover some of the project's costs through "new kinds of financial deals with various partners." That hints it could bring external investors aboard. The collaboration is part of a $300 billion cloud infrastructure deal that OpenAI signed with Oracle earlier this month. According to the Wall Street Journal, the database maker expects to start generating revenue from the contract in 2027. OpenAI will build the two other data center campuses it previewed today through a partnership with SoftBank Group Corp., one of its largest investors. The Japanese tech giant led a $40 billion round for the ChatGPT developer in March. The first site is located in Lordstown, Ohio. SoftBank broke ground earlier this year and expects to bring the data center online in 2026. The second campus will be developed by the company's SB Energy infrastructure business in Milam County, Texas. OpenAI says that the two sites can be equipped with 1.5 gigawatts' worth of compute infrastructure within 18 months. The facilities will join a data center campus in Abilene, Texas that Oracle started building for the ChatGPT developer earlier this year. OpenAI detailed today the facility's first server racks came online in June. That hardware is already powering AI training and inference workloads. The server racks currently installed in the Abilene site are powered by Nvidia Corp.'s GB200 chip. It combines two Blackwell B200 graphics processing units with a central processing unit. Oracle reportedly expects to install more than 64,000 GB200 chips in the data center by next March. OpenAI will also use newer Nvidia silicon. Earlier this week, it announced plans to adopt the chipmaker's upcoming Vera Rubin chip, which includes an 88-core CPU and a GPU based on the next-generation Rubin architecture. OpenAI disclosed the plan in conjunction with the news that it will raise up to $100 billion from Nvidia to finance data center construction projects. Last month, Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang stated that building one gigawatt of AI infrastructure costs $50 billion to $60 billion. He said that the chipmaker's hardware accounts for well over half that sum. In addition to the five data centers announced today, OpenAI may build a 600-megawatt site near its Abilene campus. The facilities will have a combined power draw of over 5.5 gigawatts. OpenAI expects the projects to create more than 25,000 jobs onsite and tens of thousands more nationwide.

OpenAI and Oracle show off Stargate AI data center in Texas and plan five more elsewhere

ABILENE, Texas (AP) -- The afternoon sun was so hot that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman traded his usual sweater for a T-shirt on the last legs of a Tuesday visit to the massive Stargate artificial intelligence data center complex that will power the future of ChatGPT. Altman announced Tuesday that OpenAI's flagship artificial AI data center in Texas will be joined by five others around the U.S. as the ChatGPT maker aims to make good on the $500 billion infrastructure investment promoted by President Donald Trump earlier this year. Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, said it is building two more data center complexes in Texas, one in New Mexico, one in Ohio and another in a Midwest location it hasn't yet disclosed. But it's the project in Abilene, Texas, that promised to be the biggest of them all, transforming what the city's mayor called an old railroad town. Oracle executives who visited the eight-building complex said it is already on track to be the world's largest AI supercluster once fully built, a reference to the hundreds of thousands of AI chips that will be running in its massive, H-shaped buildings. Altman said, "When you hit that button on ChatGPT, you really don't -- I don't, at least" -- think about what happens inside the data halls used to build and operate the chatbot. He and Oracle's new co-CEO Clay Magouyrk also sought to emphasize the steps they've taken to reduce the complex's environmental effects on a drought-prone region of West Texas, where temperatures hit 97 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday. The complex will require about 900 megawatts of electricity to power the eight buildings, running hundreds of thousands of specialized AI chips. For the first building, each server rack holds 72 of Nvidia's GB200 chips, which are specially designed for the most intensive AI workloads. Each building has about 60,000 of them. One of the buildings is already operating, and a second that Altman and Magouyrk visited Tuesday is nearly complete. OpenAI and Oracle invited media and politicians, including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, to tour the site for the first time Tuesday. "Texas is ground zero for AI," Cruz said. Trump touted Stargate shortly after returning to the White House in January. The partnership said at that time it was investing $100 billion -- and eventually up to $500 billion -- to build large-scale data centers and the energy generation needed to further AI development. Trump called the project a "resounding declaration of confidence in America's potential" under his new administration, though construction on the flagship project in Abilene began last year and had been in planning for years before that. Originally developed to mine cryptocurrency, developers pivoted and expanded their designs to tailor the project to the AI boom sparked by ChatGPT. More than 6,000 workers now commute to the massive construction project each day, in what Mayor Weldon Hurt described as a significant boost to the local economy. "AI WORKERS? HUGE DISCOUNTS" says one hand-made sign for "move-in ready" homes of one to six bedrooms. But Hurt also acknowledged that residents have mixed feelings about the project due to its water and energy effects. The city's chronically stressed reservoirs were at roughly half-capacity on Monday. Residents must follow a two-day-a-week outdoor watering schedule, trading off based on whether their address numbers are odd or even. One million gallons of water from the city's municipal water systems provides an "initial fill" for a closed-loop system that cools the data center's computers, reducing the amount that evaporates. After that initial fill, Oracle expects each of the eight buildings to need another 12,000 gallons per year, which it describes as a "remarkably low figure for a facility of this scale." "These data centers are designed to not use water," Magouyrk said. "All of the data centers that we're building (in) this part of Stargate are designed to not use water. The reason we do that is because it turns out that's harmful for the environment and this is a better solution." The closed-loop system shows that the developer is "taking its impact on local public water supplies seriously," but the overall environmental effect is more nuanced because such systems require more electricity, which also means higher indirect water usage through power generation, said Shaolei Ren, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, who has studied AI's environmental toll. Indeed, the data center complex includes a new gas-fired power plant, using natural gas turbines similar to those that power warships. The companies say the plant is meant to provide backup power for the data halls and is a better option than traditional diesel generators. Most of the power comes from the local grid, which includes a mix of gas with the sprawling wind and solar farms that dot the region. Ren said that "even with emission-reduction measures, the health impacts of essentially turning the data center site into a power plant deserve further study for nearby communities." Arlene Mendler, a Stargate neighbor, said she wished she had more say in the project. "It has completely changed the way we were living," said Mendler, who lives across the street. "We moved up here 33 years ago for the peace, quiet, tranquility. After we got home from work, we could ride horses down the road. It was that type of a place." Now, she doesn't know what to do about the constant cacophony of construction sounds or the bright lights that have altered her nighttime views. The project was essentially a done deal once she found out about it. "They took 1,200 acres and just scraped it to bare dirt," said her husband, Fred Mendler. -- -- - The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP's text archives.

OpenAI and Oracle Show off Stargate AI Data Center in Texas and Plan Five More Elsewhere

ABILENE, Texas (AP) -- The afternoon sun was so hot that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman traded his usual sweater for a T-shirt on the last legs of a Tuesday visit to the massive Stargate artificial intelligence data center complex that will power the future of ChatGPT. Altman announced Tuesday that OpenAI's flagship artificial AI data center in Texas will be joined by five others around the U.S. as the ChatGPT maker aims to make good on the $500 billion infrastructure investment promoted by President Donald Trump earlier this year. Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, said it is building two more data center complexes in Texas, one in New Mexico, one in Ohio and another in a Midwest location it hasn't yet disclosed. But it's the project in Abilene, Texas, that promised to be the biggest of them all, transforming what the city's mayor called an old railroad town. Oracle executives who visited the eight-building complex said it is already on track to be the world's largest AI supercluster once fully built, a reference to the hundreds of thousands of AI chips that will be running in its massive, H-shaped buildings. Altman said, "When you hit that button on ChatGPT, you really don't -- I don't, at least" -- think about what happens inside the data halls used to build and operate the chatbot. He and Oracle's new co-CEO Clay Magouyrk also sought to emphasize the steps they've taken to reduce the complex's environmental effects on a drought-prone region of West Texas, where temperatures hit 97 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday. The complex will require about 900 megawatts of electricity to power the eight buildings, running hundreds of thousands of specialized AI chips. For the first building, each server rack holds 72 of Nvidia's GB200 chips, which are specially designed for the most intensive AI workloads. Each building has about 60,000 of them. One of the buildings is already operating, and a second that Altman and Magouyrk visited Tuesday is nearly complete. OpenAI and Oracle invited media and politicians, including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, to tour the site for the first time Tuesday. "Texas is ground zero for AI," Cruz said. Trump touted Stargate shortly after returning to the White House in January. The partnership said at that time it was investing $100 billion -- and eventually up to $500 billion -- to build large-scale data centers and the energy generation needed to further AI development. Trump called the project a "resounding declaration of confidence in America's potential" under his new administration, though construction on the flagship project in Abilene began last year and had been in planning for years before that. Originally developed to mine cryptocurrency, developers pivoted and expanded their designs to tailor the project to the AI boom sparked by ChatGPT. More than 6,000 workers now commute to the massive construction project each day, in what Mayor Weldon Hurt described as a significant boost to the local economy. "AI WORKERS? HUGE DISCOUNTS" says one hand-made sign for "move-in ready" homes of one to six bedrooms. But Hurt also acknowledged that residents have mixed feelings about the project due to its water and energy effects. The city's chronically stressed reservoirs were at roughly half-capacity on Monday. Residents must follow a two-day-a-week outdoor watering schedule, trading off based on whether their address numbers are odd or even. One million gallons of water from the city's municipal water systems provides an "initial fill" for a closed-loop system that cools the data center's computers, reducing the amount that evaporates. After that initial fill, Oracle expects each of the eight buildings to need another 12,000 gallons per year, which it describes as a "remarkably low figure for a facility of this scale." "These data centers are designed to not use water," Magouyrk said. "All of the data centers that we're building (in) this part of Stargate are designed to not use water. The reason we do that is because it turns out that's harmful for the environment and this is a better solution." The closed-loop system shows that the developer is "taking its impact on local public water supplies seriously," but the overall environmental effect is more nuanced because such systems require more electricity, which also means higher indirect water usage through power generation, said Shaolei Ren, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, who has studied AI's environmental toll. Indeed, the data center complex includes a new gas-fired power plant, using natural gas turbines similar to those that power warships. The companies say the plant is meant to provide backup power for the data halls and is a better option than traditional diesel generators. Most of the power comes from the local grid, which includes a mix of gas with the sprawling wind and solar farms that dot the region. Ren said that "even with emission-reduction measures, the health impacts of essentially turning the data center site into a power plant deserve further study for nearby communities." Arlene Mendler, a Stargate neighbor, said she wished she had more say in the project. "It has completely changed the way we were living," said Mendler, who lives across the street. "We moved up here 33 years ago for the peace, quiet, tranquility. After we got home from work, we could ride horses down the road. It was that type of a place." Now, she doesn't know what to do about the constant cacophony of construction sounds or the bright lights that have altered her nighttime views. The project was essentially a done deal once she found out about it. "They took 1,200 acres and just scraped it to bare dirt," said her husband, Fred Mendler. -- -- - The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP's text archives.

OpenAI and Oracle show off Stargate AI data centre in Texas and plan five more elsewhere

ABILENE, Texas -- The afternoon sun was so hot that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman traded his usual sweater for a T-shirt on the last legs of a Tuesday visit to the massive Stargate artificial intelligence data centre complex that will power the future of ChatGPT. Altman announced Tuesday that OpenAI's flagship artificial AI data centew in Texas will be joined by five others around the U.S. as the ChatGPT maker aims to make good on the US$500 billion infrastructure investment promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year. Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, said it is building two more data centre complexes in Texas, one in New Mexico, one in Ohio and another in a Midwest location it hasn't yet disclosed. But it's the project in Abilene, Texas, that promised to be the biggest of them all, transforming what the city's mayor called an old railroad town. Oracle executives who visited the eight-building complex said it is already on track to be the world's largest AI supercluster once fully built, a reference to the hundreds of thousands of AI chips that will be running in its massive, H-shaped buildings. Altman said, "When you hit that button on ChatGPT, you really don't -- I don't, at least" -- think about what happens inside the data halls used to build and operate the chatbot. He and Oracle's new co-CEO Clay Magouyrk also sought to emphasize the steps they've taken to reduce the complex's environmental effects on a drought-prone region of West Texas, where temperatures hit 97 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday. The complex will require about 900 megawatts of electricity to power the eight buildings, running hundreds of thousands of specialized AI chips. For the first building, each server rack holds 72 of Nvidia's GB200 chips, which are specially designed for the most intensive AI workloads. Each building has about 60,000 of them. One of the buildings is already operating, and a second that Altman and Magouyrk visited Tuesday is nearly complete. OpenAI and Oracle invited media and politicians, including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, to tour the site for the first time Tuesday. "Texas is ground zero for AI," Cruz said. Trump touted Stargate shortly after returning to the White House in January. The partnership said at that time it was investing US$100 billion -- and eventually up to US$500 billion -- to build large-scale data centres and the energy generation needed to further AI development. Trump called the project a "resounding declaration of confidence in America's potential" under his new administration, though construction on the flagship project in Abilene began last year and had been in planning for years before that. Originally developed to mine cryptocurrency, developers pivoted and expanded their designs to tailor the project to the AI boom sparked by ChatGPT. More than 6,000 workers now commute to the massive construction project each day, in what Mayor Weldon Hurt described as a significant boost to the local economy. "AI WORKERS? HUGE DISCOUNTS" says one hand-made sign for "move-in ready" homes of one to six bedrooms. But Hurt also acknowledged that residents have mixed feelings about the project due to its water and energy effects. The city's chronically stressed reservoirs were at roughly half-capacity on Monday. Residents must follow a two-day-a-week outdoor watering schedule, trading off based on whether their address numbers are odd or even. One million gallons of water from the city's municipal water systems provides an "initial fill" for a closed-loop system that cools the data centre's computers, reducing the amount that evaporates. After that initial fill, Oracle expects each of the eight buildings to need another 12,000 gallons per year, which it describes as a "remarkably low figure for a facility of this scale." "These data centres are designed to not use water," Magouyrk said. "All of the data centres that we're building (in) this part of Stargate are designed to not use water. The reason we do that is because it turns out that's harmful for the environment and this is a better solution." The closed-loop system shows that the developer is "taking its impact on local public water supplies seriously," but the overall environmental effect is more nuanced because such systems require more electricity, which also means higher indirect water usage through power generation, said Shaolei Ren, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, who has studied AI's environmental toll. Indeed, the data centre complex includes a new gas-fired power plant, using natural gas turbines similar to those that power warships. The companies say the plant is meant to provide backup power for the data halls and is a better option than traditional diesel generators. Most of the power comes from the local grid, which includes a mix of gas with the sprawling wind and solar farms that dot the region. Ren said that "even with emission-reduction measures, the health impacts of essentially turning the data centre site into a power plant deserve further study for nearby communities." Arlene Mendler, a Stargate neighbour, said she wished she had more say in the project. "It has completely changed the way we were living," said Mendler, who lives across the street. "We moved up here 33 years ago for the peace, quiet, tranquility. After we got home from work, we could ride horses down the road. It was that type of a place." Now, she doesn't know what to do about the constant cacophony of construction sounds or the bright lights that have altered her nighttime views. The project was essentially a done deal once she found out about it. "They took 1,200 acres and just scraped it to bare dirt," said her husband, Fred Mendler.

OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank plan five new AI data centers for $500 billion Stargate project

ABILENE, Texas (Reuters) -OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank on Tuesday announced plans for five new artificial intelligence data centers in the United States to build out their ambitious Stargate project. U.S. President Donald Trump in January hosted top tech CEOs to launch Stargate, a private-sector initiative that plans to spend up to $500 billion to build AI infrastructure. AI is a priority for Trump and tech companies that are pouring billions into building the computers that are necessary to power the technology. ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said on Tuesday it will open three new sites with Oracle in Shackelford County, Texas, Dona Ana County, New Mexico and an undisclosed site in the Midwest. Two more data center sites will be built in Lordstown, Ohio and Milam County, Texas by OpenAI, Japan's SoftBank and a SoftBank affiliate. The new sites, the Oracle-OpenAI site expansion in Abilene, Texas, and the ongoing projects with CoreWeave will bring Stargate's total data center capacity to nearly 7 gigawatts and more than $400 billion in investment over the next three years, OpenAI said. The $500 billion project was intended to generate 10 gigawatts in total data center capacity. "AI can only fulfill its promise if we build the compute to power it," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement. The Tuesday's announcement, expected to create 25,000 onsite jobs, follows Nvidia saying on Monday that it will invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI and supply data center chips. OpenAI and partners plan to use debt financing to lease chips for the Stargate project, people familiar with the matter said. OpenAI and its backer Microsoft are among the tech giants pouring billions into data centers to power generative AI services such as ChatGPT and Copilot. AI's role in sensitive sectors such as defense and China's push to catch up have made the nascent technology a top priority for Trump. (Reporting by Nilutpal Timsina and Angela Christy in Bengaluru and Deepa Seetharaman in Abilene; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)