OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank Expand Stargate AI Infrastructure with Five New Data Centers

Key Takeaways

ABILENE, Texas - OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank on Tuesday announced a massive expansion of their Stargate artificial intelligence infrastructure project, unveiling plans for five new data center sites across the United States that will bring the initiative's total capacity to nearly 7 gigawatts and investment to over $400 billion over the next three years.

The announcement, made during a media showcase at the flagship Stargate facility in Abilene, Texas, represents a significant acceleration of the $500 billion infrastructure commitment originally unveiled at the White House in January.

The companies now expect to reach their full $500 billion, 10-gigawatt target by the end of 2025, ahead of the original schedule.

Ambitious scale and geographic spread

Of the five new sites announced, three will be developed by Oracle in partnership with OpenAI: one in Shackelford County, Texas (near Abilene), another in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, and a third at an undisclosed Midwest location.

Two additional sites will be built through a SoftBank-OpenAI partnership in Lordstown, Ohio, where SoftBank has already broken ground, and in Milam County, Texas, with SB Energy providing powered infrastructure for fast-build construction.

The five new sites were selected through a rigorous nationwide process that reviewed over 300 proposals from more than 30 states, with today's announcement marking the first set of selections.

The scale of the project is unparalleled in the data center industry. A 1-gigawatt facility requires enough substations, cooling, and transmission infrastructure to sustain the power demand of nearly a million homes.

Until recently, data center facilities operated by the largest cloud computing companies topped out at a few hundred megawatts, but Microsoft and Meta have recently unveiled multi-gigawatt projects in Wisconsin and Louisiana.

Executive vision and strategic partnership

Speaking at the Abilene facility, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman emphasized the critical importance of compute infrastructure for AI development.

"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 told The Associated Press. "We have many other ideas and products we want to build."

Altman also noted that his company has been "severely limited for the value we can offer to people," highlighting the expansion as a way to break out from OpenAI's longtime exclusive computing partnership with Microsoft.

Oracle's new co-CEO Clay Magouyrk emphasized the environmental considerations built into the project design.

"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."

Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp., stated: "Stargate is harnessing SoftBank's innovative data center design and energy expertise to deliver the scalable compute that powers AI's future.

Together with OpenAI, Arm, and our Stargate partners, we are paving the way for a new era where AI advances humanity."

Technical infrastructure and economic impact

The Abilene complex requires about 900 megawatts of electricity to power eight buildings, with each server rack holding 72 of Nvidia's GB200 chips specially designed for intensive AI workloads. Each building is expected to house about 60,000 of these chips.

Oracle began delivering the first NVIDIA GB200 racks in June, and early training and inference workloads are already running to advance OpenAI's next-generation research.

The economic impact extends beyond the technology companies. More than 6,000 workers now commute to the Abilene construction site daily, with the campus expected to provide nearly 1,700 jobs onsite when fully operational, plus thousands of additional indirect jobs.

The Tuesday announcement is expected to create 25,000 onsite jobs across all facilities.

Environmental considerations and challenges

The massive scale of AI infrastructure raises significant environmental questions.

The data center complex includes a new gas-fired power plant using natural gas turbines similar to those that power warships, which the companies say provides backup power and is a better option than traditional diesel generators.

"We're burning gas to run this data center," Altman acknowledged, but added that "in the long trajectory of Stargate" the hope is to rely on many other power sources.

Environmental experts note the complexity of the impact. Shaolei Ren, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, who has studied AI's environmental toll, pointed out that while the closed-loop cooling systems show the developer is "taking its impact on local public water supplies seriously," the overall environmental effect is more nuanced because such systems require more electricity, which means higher indirect water usage through power generation.

Political and strategic context

The Stargate expansion carries significant political weight. OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank first announced the $500 billion commitment in January at the White House alongside President Trump, as part of a broader push to spur investment in American AI infrastructure.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who attended Tuesday's event, framed the stakes in both geopolitical and local terms: "Message number one: America will beat China in the race for AI. Message number two? Texas is ground zero for AI. 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."

The event was described as "a victory lap of sorts" for Altman and Oracle's Magouyrk, who were pushing back against critics who have questioned the progress of the ambitious Stargate project.

The announcement comes amid ongoing debate about AI investment sustainability.

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