OpenAI Stargate announces five new datacenter sites in US • The Register
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.
Datacenters! As far as the eye can see – Click to enlarge
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. ®
