Stargate Project

The Stargate Project is a private American AI infrastructure joint venture, announced at the White House on January 21, 2025, under which SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX said they intended to invest $500 billion over four years in new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States, beginning with $100 billion deployed immediately ^[1]. President Donald Trump unveiled it alongside OpenAI's Sam Altman, Oracle's Larry Ellison and SoftBank's Masayoshi Son, calling it "the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history" ^[2]. SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners, with SoftBank holding financial responsibility and OpenAI operational responsibility; Son is chairman, and Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle and OpenAI were named the key initial technology partners ^[1]. OpenAI said the buildout was already under way, "starting in Texas"; the first campus, in Abilene, had been under construction since June 2024 ^[1][3]. OpenAI later described the January pledge as a commitment to invest $500 billion in 10 gigawatts of U.S. AI infrastructure, and from January 2026 framed the target as 10 GW by 2029 ^[4][5].

Stargate was unveiled on the second day of Trump's second term, one day after he revoked the Biden administration's AI executive order 14110 ^[6]. Trump said he would help the partners "through emergency declarations, because we have an emergency" so that they could produce electricity at their own plants ^[2]. Federal support for projects of this size was later set out in the July 2025 AI Action Plan and in Executive Order 14318 on data center permitting, although the Action Plan itself does not mention Stargate ^[7][8].

The name had been used inside OpenAI a year earlier for a separate supercomputer concept reported by The Information in March 2024: a campus Microsoft would build for OpenAI, costing as much as $100 billion and needing up to five gigawatts at full build-out ^[9][10]. The 2025 venture has different financial sponsors, and its launch coincided with a change to the Microsoft-OpenAI agreement that replaced Microsoft's exclusivity on new OpenAI capacity with a right of first refusal ^[11]. Microsoft gave up that right in October 2025 ^[12].

Progress through 2025 and 2026 has been uneven. The first two buildings of the flagship Abilene campus, developed by Crusoe on Lancium's Clean Campus, were running OpenAI workloads on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure by September 30, 2025 ^[13], and by September 2026 Oracle had delivered six of the eight buildings, 618 MW, to OpenAI ^[14]. Five more U.S. sites announced on September 23, 2025 and a Michigan campus announced on October 30 took planned capacity past 8 GW and planned investment past $450 billion over three years ^[15][16], and in April 2026 OpenAI said it had surpassed its goal of securing 10 GW ^[17]. In the same period Oracle and OpenAI dropped a planned expansion at Abilene, where Crusoe then began a separate campus for Microsoft ^[18][19]; OpenAI paused Stargate UK and stepped back from Stargate Norway ^[20][21]; the United Arab Emirates began reworking the campus that hosts Stargate UAE after Iranian attacks ^[22]; and in September 2026 Oracle sent a force majeure notice on the New Mexico campus ^[23]. OpenAI's dollar figures describe planned capacity and investment rather than capital raised, and Epoch AI estimated in April 2026 that about 0.3 GW of the more than 9 GW planned at the seven U.S. sites was operating ^[15][24].

At a glance

Background

The 2024 Microsoft proposal

The Stargate name first appeared publicly in March 2024, when The Information reported that Microsoft and OpenAI were drawing up plans for a data center project that could cost as much as $100 billion and would house an AI supercomputer called Stargate, expected to launch in 2028 and to need as much as 5 GW at full build-out ^[9][10]. Stargate would have been the fifth phase of the companies' supercomputing program. A fourth-phase system was planned for Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, with operations starting in 2026, and Microsoft was still deciding where to put Stargate and which chips it would use ^[10]. Fortune's Jeremy Kahn compared the plan's audacity to Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, the "Star Wars" missile shield ^[29]. According to The Information, Microsoft employees called the project Mercury, while OpenAI referred to it internally as Stargate, a reference to the 1994 film about a wormhole device ^[30].

Under that earlier concept, Microsoft would have built the facility and OpenAI would have used it. Microsoft had worked with OpenAI since 2019 and held exclusivity over new OpenAI cloud capacity until January 2025 ^[11]. In early January 2025, two weeks before the Stargate announcement, Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith wrote that the company expected to spend $80 billion on AI-enabled data centers in fiscal 2025, more than half of it in the United States ^[31].

How did Stargate decouple OpenAI from Microsoft?

The 2025 Stargate Project replaced the Microsoft-centered plan with a multi-investor vehicle, and OpenAI used the announcement to change its cloud terms. Microsoft's post of January 21, 2025 began: "We are thrilled to continue our strategic partnership with OpenAI and to partner on Stargate." It said that Microsoft's access to OpenAI's intellectual property, the revenue-sharing arrangements and the exclusivity of OpenAI's API on Azure would continue through 2030, but that the agreement was "moving to a model where Microsoft has a right of first refusal (ROFR)" on new capacity, and that Microsoft had approved OpenAI's ability to build additional capacity, "primarily for research and training of models" ^[11]. Speaking on CNBC the next day, Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said, "all I know is I'm good for my $80 billion" ^[32].

Over the following 15 months the separation went further. Under the agreement announced on October 28, 2025, after OpenAI's recapitalization, Microsoft held a stake valued at about $135 billion, roughly 27 percent on an as-converted diluted basis; OpenAI contracted to buy an incremental $250 billion of Azure services; and Microsoft gave up its right of first refusal to be OpenAI's compute provider ^[12]. On April 27, 2026 the companies amended the agreement again. Microsoft remained OpenAI's primary cloud partner, but OpenAI could serve all of its products through any cloud provider; Microsoft's license to OpenAI models and products through 2032 became non-exclusive; and OpenAI's revenue share payments to Microsoft would continue through 2030 at the same percentage, subject to a total cap ^[33]. Stargate was, in effect, the infrastructure side of a broader unwinding of the exclusivity that had defined the Microsoft-OpenAI relationship.

The two plans differ in structure. The 2024 concept was a single company's project, with Microsoft choosing the site and OpenAI as the user, aimed at about 2028 ^[10]. The 2025 venture has several equity funders and no single corporate balance sheet behind it, and Microsoft is a technology partner rather than the sponsor ^[1]. SoftBank's role grew out of Son's courtship of the incoming administration. In December 2024, at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, Son announced a four-year, $100 billion U.S. AI investment, and at the White House he quipped, "Now I came back with $500" ^[34][2]. Trump said the Stargate figure came "in addition to a separate pledge, between $100 and $200 billion, from, as we know, from Masa" ^[34].

Announcement

The Stargate Project was unveiled at the White House on the afternoon of January 21, 2025, Trump's second day in office. Trump appeared with Altman, Ellison and Son and introduced Stargate as "a new American company that will invest $500 billion at least in AI infrastructure in the United States," adding that it would be "moving very rapidly, creating over 100,000 American jobs almost immediately" ^[2]. He said Stargate would build "the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of advancements in AI," including "the construction of colossal data centers," and framed the project as competition with China: "China is a competitor, and others are competitors. We want it to be in this country" ^[2].

Ellison said the first data centers were "under construction in Texas," that "Each building is a half a million square feet," and that ten buildings were being built, a number he said would grow to twenty, with "other locations beyond the Abilene location, which is our first location" ^[2]. Crusoe's own plan at the time called for two buildings in a first phase, later expanded to eight ^[3]. Ellison also described AI-designed cancer vaccines that could be made robotically "in about 48 hours" ^[2]. Son said "this is the beginning of golden age" for America, told Trump "We wouldn't have decided unless you won," and predicted that after AGI "artificial superintelligence will come to solve the issues that mankind would never, ever have thought that we could solve" ^[2]. Altman said, "I think this will be the most important project of this era," and that "we wouldn't be able to do this without you, Mr. President" ^[2].

OpenAI's post the same day used more careful wording. It said the new company "intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years" and that "We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately," with "SoftBank having financial responsibility and OpenAI having operational responsibility"; it added that "Masayoshi Son will be the chairman" and that the infrastructure would "create hundreds of thousands of American jobs" ^[1]. The post said Oracle, Nvidia and OpenAI would "closely collaborate to build and operate this computing system," that OpenAI would continue to increase its use of Azure, and, in an update of January 31, invited proposals from landowners and power providers and qualifications from architecture and engineering firms ^[1]. The "intends to invest" formulation, rather than a statement of committed capital, became a focus of early skepticism, including a Bloomberg analysis in February 2025 that asked whether the venture was reality or hype ^[35].

The announcement came one day after Trump revoked Executive Order 14110 on safe and trustworthy AI and two days before he signed Executive Order 14179, "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence," which ordered an AI action plan within 180 days ^[6][36]. Trump called the venture "a resounding declaration of confidence in America's potential under a new President" ^[2].

Partners and structure

OpenAI described the Stargate Project as "a new company" ^[1]. The four named equity funders at launch were SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX, the Abu Dhabi-backed AI investment fund; the technology partner list was distinct: Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle and OpenAI ^[1]. Oracle therefore had two roles, as investor and technology partner, and OpenAI was both an equity partner and the user of the capacity. By July 2025 OpenAI was describing Stargate more broadly, as "OpenAI's overarching AI infrastructure platform," covering data center partnerships with Oracle, SoftBank and CoreWeave as well as international projects under OpenAI for Countries ^[4].

Shortly after the launch, The Information reported that SoftBank and OpenAI would each commit $19 billion and would each own 40 percent of the joint venture ^[40]. Accounts of the same report differ on the other two funders: Bloomberg Línea said Oracle and MGX would each put in about $7 billion, while DCD's Spanish edition said the two would contribute $7 billion combined ^[38][41]. According to Bloomberg Línea's summary, Altman told colleagues that Stargate worked like a venture fund, with OpenAI and SoftBank as general partners and the rest of the money coming from limited partners and debt ^[38].

OpenAI chief operating officer Brad Lightcap took over the company's day-to-day operations in March 2025, with responsibility for "global deployment," covering infrastructure, strategy and partnerships ^[42]. OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, led the delegation whose talks with Argentina's government preceded the Stargate Argentina letter of intent ^[43]. In December 2025 former UK chancellor George Osborne said he would join OpenAI in London as managing director and head of OpenAI for Countries, the program through which OpenAI pursues Stargate projects abroad ^[44].

Technology and supply partners

Many of the agreements that supply Stargate sites were signed by OpenAI itself rather than by the joint venture, including its chip deals with Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom ^[39][45][46].

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang told CNBC that the 10 GW project amounted to roughly 4 million to 5 million GPUs ^[50]. The letter of intent proved slow to finalize. The Wall Street Journal reported at the end of January 2026 that Nvidia was rethinking the arrangement and discussing an equity investment of tens of billions of dollars instead; Huang called the report "nonsense" and said, "We will invest a great deal of money" ^[51].

What was committed versus what was notional

Because the January 2025 announcement said the venture "intends to invest," its numbers are best read as targets. Only the first $100 billion was described as deployed "immediately," and the rest was expected to come from limited partners and debt ^[1][38]. SoftBank's separate $40 billion investment in OpenAI, closed on March 31, 2025 at a $300 billion valuation with $30 billion from SoftBank and $10 billion from a syndicate, was expected to provide about $18 billion toward OpenAI's Stargate commitment, according to a source cited by CNBC; SoftBank's total could have been cut to $20 billion had OpenAI not restructured by the end of 2025 ^[52]. SoftBank completed the commitment in late December 2025 with a final transfer of $22 billion to $22.5 billion, for an aggregate commitment of $41 billion including co-investors and a stake of about 11 percent ^[53]. To help pay for it, SoftBank sold its entire Nvidia stake for $5.83 billion, as it disclosed on November 11, 2025 ^[54].

Lenders financed much of the physical buildout at the project level. JPMorgan provided a $2.3 billion construction loan, arranged by Newmark in January 2025, for the 206 MW first phase at Abilene on behalf of Blue Owl Capital, Crusoe and Primary Digital Infrastructure ^[55]. In May 2025 Crusoe said its $15 billion joint venture with Blue Owl and Primary Digital Infrastructure had entered a second phase, for which DCD reported $11.6 billion of debt and equity ^[56][57].

Financing

The financing assembled in public mixes partner equity, project-level construction loans, the balance sheets of Oracle and SoftBank and, from 2026, credit support from Nvidia.

OpenAI's own dollar figures describe planned spending over the following three years, not money raised ^[15][16]. Much of the capital that has reached the sites has come through developers and their lenders, Oracle's balance sheet and SoftBank's borrowing. SoftBank's 2026 funding relied heavily on debt. Its $40 billion bridge facility with JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Mizuho, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and MUFG financed a $30 billion follow-on investment in OpenAI through Vision Fund 2 ^[59]. In April 2026 it sought a $10 billion margin loan secured on its OpenAI shares, reportedly priced at SOFR plus 425 basis points, after S&P had cut its credit outlook on SoftBank to negative ^[66]; it signed a two-year $10 billion margin loan in August 2026, when its total investment in OpenAI was slated to reach close to $65 billion by October ^[61]; and in September 2026 it launched a bond sale of about $11 billion to fund the OpenAI investment ^[65].

Oracle carried the Oracle-led sites through leases and its own borrowing. CNBC reported in March 2026 that Oracle had been funding the Abilene buildout by taking on tens of billions of dollars of debt ^[67]. In September 2026 the Financial Times reported, as relayed by Reuters, that banks were quoting about $18 billion of loans tied to the Project Jupiter campus in New Mexico at 89 to 91 cents on the dollar, that efforts to sell the debt to a broader pool of investors had stalled, and that Oracle's credit rating stood one notch above junk after an S&P downgrade in July ^[64].

Nvidia moved from supplier toward financier. Under its agreement of August 17, 2026, Nvidia will invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy and provide credit support for the initial 4.25 GW of IT capacity at the PORTS-Pike campus in Ohio, which SB Energy will lease to OpenAI for 20 years; a securities filing reported by CNBC capped Nvidia's obligation for that initial commitment at $105 billion ^[62][63]. Developers also turned to public markets. SB Energy filed for an initial public offering on September 1, 2026, saying it was "substantially dependent" on OpenAI as tenant and equity investor; it had not yet earned revenue from its data center business, and none of its data centers was operating ^[68].

First site: Abilene, Texas

The first Stargate campus, also covered in the Abilene data center article, is in Abilene, Texas, on Lancium's Clean Campus. Oracle's September 2025 fact sheet describes eight buildings on 1,100 acres with up to about 4 million square feet ^[69]. Crusoe designed and built the buildings; Oracle leases the campus and runs it as part of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure; Nvidia GB200 NVL72 racks were the first compute installed; and OpenAI is the customer ^{[3][13][67][4]}. Construction began in June 2024, seven months before Stargate was announced ^[3]. According to The Information, as quoted by Spyglass, Oracle and Crusoe had first discussed the site with Elon Musk's xAI under the code name Project Ludicrous, a reference to the film Spaceballs; after Musk chose to build his own data center, Oracle began working with Crusoe in June 2024 to develop it for OpenAI ^[30]. Lancium provides the land, grid interconnection and power planning ^[3].

The first phase consisted of two buildings totaling 980,000 square feet and more than 200 MW. The second phase, under construction from March 2025, added six buildings for a total of eight, about 4 million square feet and 1.2 GW ^[3][56]. Crusoe said the finished campus would be able to support "hundreds of thousands of GPUs on a single integrated network fabric" ^[13]. The site has a 1.2 GW grid interconnection with ERCOT, Texas's grid operator, and Lancium's power plan adds behind-the-meter battery storage and solar ^[3]. The buildings use direct-to-chip liquid cooling through a closed-loop system that does not evaporate water, and Crusoe said they were designed for both liquid and air cooling ^[56][13]. OpenAI said in April 2026 that the one-time initial fill for each building equals about two Olympic swimming pools and that annual water use for the whole cooling system at full buildout should be comparable to a medium-sized office building, or about four average households ^[17]. Oracle's fact sheet put the water needed for cooling-system maintenance at about 12,625 gallons per building per year ^[69].

On-site gas generation has grown well beyond the early filings. A January 2025 application to Texas regulators described ten simple-cycle natural gas turbines able to supply up to 360.5 MW for "primary and backup power," at a cost of up to $500 million ^[70]. Oracle's fact sheet said GE Vernova turbines would serve as backup in place of diesel generators ^[69]. In July 2026 the newsroom Floodlight reported that the developers had built 10 gas-powered turbines and 62 backup diesel generators and wanted to add 41 more turbines and 18 more generators ^[71].

Oracle began delivering the first Nvidia GB200 racks in June 2025, and OpenAI began running early training and inference workloads soon afterward ^[4]. On September 30, 2025 Crusoe announced that the first phase "is now up and running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and continues to progress rapidly" ^[13]. Crusoe topped out the last of the eight buildings in November 2025 ^[72]. The schedule for the remaining buildings slipped. When the second phase was financed in May 2025 Crusoe expected it to be energized in mid-2026, but in March 2026 it said it expected completion by the end of 2026 ^[56][19], and Abilene leaders were told the same month that construction on the campus would run through early 2027 ^[73]. On its September 10, 2026 earnings call, Oracle said it had delivered 131,000 GPUs at Abilene during the quarter and that six of the eight buildings, representing 618 MW and 75 percent of total capacity, had been delivered to the customer ^[14].

The campus has trained OpenAI's frontier models. OpenAI said in April 2026 that GPT-5.5 was trained at Abilene, on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with Nvidia GB200 systems ^[17], and Oracle chief executive Clay Magouyrk said in September 2026 that GPT-6 Astra had been trained there: "The recently released GPT-6 Astra was trained at our site in Abilene" ^[14].

The campus has also had operating and labor problems. At BlackRock's infrastructure summit in March 2026, Altman said a severe weather event at Abilene had temporarily "brought things down" ^[67]. A Time investigation published in June 2026, based on federal OSHA filings, two legal filings, 911 call logs and interviews with three workers, described safety concerns at the site, including a negligence lawsuit by an injured truck driver against Kiewit, whose subsidiary The Industrial Company is building the site, and MMR Group ^[74]. Oracle's fact sheet put the daily construction workforce at more than 6,400 in September 2025 ^[69].

The partners also planned to grow beyond the eight buildings, and that plan fell apart. OpenAI's September 2025 announcement included "an additional potential expansion of 600 megawatts near the flagship Stargate site" ^[15]. In March 2026 Bloomberg reported that Oracle and OpenAI had abandoned plans to take the campus to as much as 2 GW after financing talks dragged and OpenAI struggled to forecast demand; Nvidia had reportedly paid Crusoe a $150 million deposit on the capacity and approached Meta about leasing it ^[18][75]. Oracle called reports about problems at the site "false and incorrect," said two buildings were fully operational and the rest of the campus was progressing as planned, and said it had completed leasing arrangements for an additional 4.5 GW to support its commitments to OpenAI ^[76]. On March 27, 2026 Crusoe announced a separate 900 MW campus next to the existing one for Microsoft, with two buildings and an on-site power plant and the first building to be energized in mid-2027, bringing the whole Abilene site to about 2.1 GW ^[19]. Fortune described Microsoft's move as picking up a Texas project that OpenAI had not wanted ^[77].

Subsequent sites

On September 23, 2025, OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank announced five more U.S. sites. With Abilene and "ongoing projects with CoreWeave," OpenAI said, they brought Stargate to "nearly 7 gigawatts of planned capacity and over $400 billion in investment over the next three years," putting it "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" ^[15]. The partners said they had reviewed more than 300 proposals from more than 30 states ^[15]. Three of the sites were Oracle-led and part of the July 2025 agreement to develop up to 4.5 GW, which OpenAI said "represents a partnership that exceeds $300 billion between the two companies over the next five years" ^[15]. The Wall Street Journal had reported on September 10 that OpenAI had agreed to buy about $300 billion of computing power from Oracle over roughly five years starting in 2027 ^[78]. Oracle has not stated the figure, and neither company has confirmed the 2027 start. The two SoftBank-led sites "can scale to 1.5 gigawatts over the next 18 months," OpenAI said ^[15]. A further Oracle site, in Saline Township, Michigan, followed on October 30, 2025, taking Stargate to "over 8 gigawatts of planned capacity and more than $450 billion in investment over the next three years" ^[16].

Shackelford County, Texas

The Shackelford County site is Vantage Data Centers' Frontier campus, just across the county line from Abilene ^[24]. Vantage describes a 1,200-acre campus of ten single-story buildings, about 3.7 million square feet and 1.4 GW, held a groundbreaking in December 2025 and called it "part of Oracle and OpenAI's Stargate expansion" ^[79]; Oracle's fact sheet gave the site as 700 acres ^[69]. The campus is a $25 billion development, with its first building scheduled for delivery in the second half of 2026 ^[83]. Oracle listed VoltaGrid as a partner and an on-site, behind-the-meter gas microgrid using Jenbacher reciprocating engines ^[69], and in October 2026 Bloomberg reported that Oracle had trucked compressed natural gas, supplied by VoltaGrid, to the site for initial work while pipelines were built ^[83]. In September 2026 Magouyrk called Shackelford "our next gigawatt scale campus" and said it was progressing well, though it had not delivered capacity in the quarter just ended ^[14].

Doña Ana County, New Mexico (Project Jupiter)

The New Mexico site is Project Jupiter, a campus at Santa Teresa in Doña Ana County led by STACK Infrastructure and Borderplex Digital Assets, with Oracle as its main tenant ^[84][23]. On September 19, 2025 the county commission approved up to $165 billion of industrial revenue bonds for the project ^[84]. Oracle's fact sheet described four buildings on 1,400 acres, up to $165 billion of private investment over the project's lifetime, $360 million of payments in lieu of taxes, $50 million for county drinking water and wastewater systems, closed-loop cooling and an on-site gas microgrid running independently of the local grid; it noted that county commissioners had just approved an industrial revenue bond for the project ^[69]. The power plan later shifted to fuel cells: Oracle said in April 2026 that the campus would use up to 2.45 GW of gas-fueled Bloom Energy fuel cells in an on-site microgrid ^[83].

Gas supply became the main obstacle. New Mexico's State Land Office twice rejected rights-of-way for Energy Transfer's Green Chile pipeline, in March and July 2026, and the pipeline's target date slipped from August 15, 2026 to February 1, 2027; a separate air-quality permit for the fuel cells was pending, with a state deadline of November 23 ^[83][23]. In September 2026 Magouyrk said construction was "definitely on track" while Oracle went through the air-permit process ^[14]. Later that month Bloomberg reported that Oracle had sent a force majeure notice to the developer. According to TechCrunch, Oracle was not seeking to leave as the campus's main tenant, but the notice would let it delay payments if the facility missed its 2028 target to come online. Oracle said "Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule," and Blue Owl Capital, whose unit received the notice, said "this notice does not change the financial commitments to this multi-year project" ^[23]. The campus had drawn opposition from residents and environmental groups ^[23]. In October 2026 Bloomberg reported that Oracle was weighing trucked compressed gas so that the first phases could run before the pipeline opened ^[83]. The project's roughly $18 billion of bank loans, arranged in late 2025, came under pressure in the debt market in September 2026 ^[64].

Milam County, Texas

The Milam County site, about 70 miles northeast of Austin, is being built by SB Energy, SoftBank's energy and infrastructure company ^[24]. On January 9, 2026 OpenAI and SoftBank said each would invest $500 million in SB Energy, that SB Energy would build and operate the 1.2 GW site and that OpenAI had signed a 1.2 GW lease for it; SB Energy plans to build new generation and storage to supply most of the campus's power ^[37][5]. According to The Information, as relayed by Tom's Hardware, OpenAI and SoftBank had struggled over control of the site until a session in Tokyo produced a compromise: SoftBank would own and develop it, while OpenAI would control its design and hold a long-term lease ^[85]. A Texas filing showed the first-phase building, called Freebird, as a single-story, 548,950 square foot data center with four data halls, an estimated cost of $470 million and an October 15 completion date ^[82]. SB Energy's IPO filing on September 1, 2026 said none of its data centers was yet operating ^[68].

Lordstown, Ohio

At Lordstown, OpenAI said in September 2025, SoftBank had "broken ground on an advanced data center design which is on track to be operational next year" ^[15]. Two months earlier The Wall Street Journal had reported that Stargate, having completed no data center deals, was aiming for a smaller data center in Ohio by the end of 2025 ^[86]. In practice the site, at the former Foxconn plant, is mainly a factory for AI servers and data center equipment run by a SoftBank and Foxconn venture. Epoch AI saw cleared land but no large-scale data center construction in February 2026 and estimated that any data center there would be no larger than about 0.3 GW ^[24]. Lordstown's village council voted 6-0 in November 2025 to ban future data centers in the village ^[87]; the ordinance as proposed in October included exemptions, among them one for SoftBank ^[88].

Port Washington, Wisconsin

The Midwest site named in September 2025 turned out to be Port Washington, Wisconsin, north of Milwaukee. On October 22, 2025 Vantage announced the Lighthouse campus there: four data centers providing close to 1 GW, more than $15 billion of investment and completion scheduled for 2028 ^[80]. Vantage said it would enable new solar, wind and battery capacity in Wisconsin, with 70 percent allocated to the campus and 30 percent made available to Wisconsin consumers ^[80], and OpenAI said its developer partners would pay for all of the power infrastructure through a dedicated electricity rate from WEC Energy Group ^[5]. Magouyrk said in September 2026 that the site would draw its power from the grid rather than on-site generation and that "data center delivery is actually very on track" ^[14]. In April 2026 OpenAI made its first Stargate community donation, to the Port Washington-Saukville Education Foundation, with Vantage and Oracle ^[17].

Saline Township, Michigan

On October 30, 2025 OpenAI announced the Stargate Michigan campus, a site of more than 1 GW in Saline Township, outside Ann Arbor, as part of its 4.5 GW partnership with Oracle. Related Digital is the developer, the project was expected to create more than 2,500 union construction jobs, and DTE Energy would serve it using existing excess transmission capacity, with any upgrades paid for by the project rather than local ratepayers ^[16]. The township board had voted 4-1 on September 10, 2025 against rezoning the 575 acres of farmland involved; Related Digital and the landowners sued two days later, alleging exclusionary zoning, and in October the board voted 4-1 to settle ^[89].

The financing was briefly in doubt. In December 2025 the Financial Times reported that Blue Owl Capital would not provide $10 billion of funding for the project, while Blackstone held talks about financing it ^[90]. In April 2026 Related Digital and Blackstone said they had secured the financing for the planned $16 billion campus and that "Major construction is well underway in Saline Township" ^[60]. DTE received conditional state approval to supply power, which Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel appealed, arguing that the contracts had been heavily redacted ^[60]. On June 1, 2026 Related Digital, Blackstone, Oracle, OpenAI, Walbridge and Governor Gretchen Whitmer held a launch ceremony for the campus, called The Barn ^[81]. OpenAI described it as a 1 GW campus and pledged that "costs will not be passed on to local ratepayers" ^[91].

Other OpenAI campuses announced in 2026

OpenAI announced two more large U.S. campuses in 2026 without calling them Stargate sites in its announcements, although its April 2026 post describes Stargate as OpenAI's long-term effort to build its compute foundation ^[17]. On August 17, 2026 OpenAI said it had agreed to secure about 8 GW of IT capacity at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio, which SB Energy is developing on private land and remediated Department of Energy land at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant ^[92]. SB Energy will build, own and operate the campus under a 20-year lease to OpenAI; the first 800 MW is expected in 2028, the buildout is to run through 2032, and Nvidia will be the exclusive supplier of AI compute and will back the initial 4.25 GW ^[92][62].

On July 22, 2026 OpenAI announced Project Camellia in Effingham County, Georgia, a campus it is designing and developing itself, for which it contracted with Georgia Power for 3.2 GW to be delivered in phases between 2028 and 2032 ^[93]. OpenAI pledged $80 million of community benefits and said residential electricity rates would not rise because of the project ^[93]. In September 2026 the Southern Environmental Law Center sued the county's industrial development authority on behalf of a conservation group and residents, alleging that officials violated Georgia's open meetings and open records laws while advancing the $20 billion project ^[94].

International

OpenAI extended the Stargate name abroad through OpenAI for Countries, which it launched in May 2025 ^[95]. These projects are generally separate ventures in which OpenAI is a customer or offtaker rather than an owner ^[96][43][26].

Stargate UAE, announced on May 22, 2025 with G42, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco and SoftBank, is a 1 GW cluster to be built by G42 and operated by OpenAI and Oracle inside the planned 5 GW UAE-U.S. AI Campus in Abu Dhabi, using Nvidia GB300 systems. The partners said the campus would be powered by nuclear, solar and natural gas and that the first 200 MW cluster was expected to go live in 2026 ^[48]. In December 2025 The National reported that the first phase was due to be completed in the third quarter of 2026 ^[98]. The Iran war, which began in February 2026, changed the picture. In April Iran's armed forces released a video naming Stargate UAE as a potential target, and in September Reuters reported that the UAE was quietly revising the 5 GW campus into a network of data centers spread across the country and considering air defenses and underground construction. Reuters said construction of the $30 billion, 1 GW first phase had begun in 2025 and that its first 200 MW was due to come online in 2026; G42 said work was progressing as planned ^[22].

Stargate Norway, announced on July 31, 2025, is an Nscale project at Kvandal, near Narvik, owned by a 50/50 venture of Nscale and Aker, with 230 MW planned, ambitions for another 290 MW and a target of 100,000 Nvidia GPUs by the end of 2026. OpenAI was to be an "initial offtaker" ^[96]. In April 2026 OpenAI abandoned plans to rent the capacity directly after its offtake talks with Nscale did not conclude. Microsoft took the capacity, adding more than 30,000 Nvidia Rubin GPUs at Narvik, and OpenAI said it would rent compute in Norway from Microsoft instead, which it said made more financial sense under existing contracted spending ^[21].

Stargate UK, announced in September 2025 with Nscale and Nvidia, was to explore offtake of up to 8,000 GPUs in the first quarter of 2026, potentially scaling to 31,000, at sites including Cobalt Park in the North East ^[20]. OpenAI paused it in April 2026. "We continue to explore Stargate U.K. and will move forward when the right conditions such as regulation and the cost of energy enable long-term infrastructure investment," a spokesperson said ^[20].

In October 2025 OpenAI and Sur Energy signed a letter of intent to explore a large data center in Argentina, with Sur Energy as energy and infrastructure developer and OpenAI as a potential offtaker ^[43]. Argentina's government announced the project on October 10 as Stargate Argentina, saying the data center would have a capacity of up to 500 MW, would be placed under the RIGI investment incentive regime and would involve up to $25 billion of investment. Sur Energy had planned to begin construction in 2026 and to start delivering energy in 2027, but a year after the announcement the fact-checking site Chequeado found no progress, no concrete investment and no formal RIGI application ^[25].

Other countries signed earlier-stage agreements. In South Korea, OpenAI signed agreements on October 1, 2025 with the science ministry, SK Telecom and Samsung companies to explore AI data centers ^[27]. In Australia, NEXTDC agreed a non-binding memorandum of understanding on December 5, 2025 to plan and develop a hyperscale AI campus with OpenAI at its S7 site in Eastern Creek, Sydney ^[28], and DCD reported in July 2026 that planning documents put the site at up to 612 MW ^[97]. In India, OpenAI said on February 18, 2026 that, as part of "our global Stargate initiative," it would become the first customer of Tata Consultancy Services' HyperVault data center business, beginning with 100 MW and potentially scaling to 1 GW ^[26].

Progress toward the $500 billion and 10 GW targets

These statements count capacity under development, planned or secured. Capacity in service is much smaller. Epoch AI estimated in April 2026 that Abilene, the only operating site, was running at about 0.3 GW of total facility power, against more than 9 GW planned across the seven U.S. sites ^[24], and Oracle reported 618 MW delivered at Abilene by September 2026 ^[14]. OpenAI's ambitions also outgrew the original target: Altman cited roughly $1.4 trillion of infrastructure commitments over eight years in November 2025, and in February 2026 the company told investors it was targeting about $600 billion of total compute spending by 2030 ^[67][47]. For OpenAI's wider set of capacity contracts, see the list of AI compute deals.

Connection to administration policy

Stargate is the most visible private part of an industrial-policy push that took shape in the first months of the second Trump administration.

On January 20, 2025, Trump revoked Executive Order 14110 on safe, secure and trustworthy AI ^[6]. On January 23 he signed Executive Order 14179, "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence," which directed senior White House officials to produce an AI action plan within 180 days ^[36]. That plan, America's AI Action Plan, was released on July 23, 2025 with three pillars: "Accelerate AI Innovation," "Build American AI Infrastructure" and "Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security." The plan does not mention Stargate by name ^[7].

Trump signed three executive orders the same day: EO 14318, "Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure"; EO 14319, "Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government"; and EO 14320, "Promoting the Export of the American AI Technology Stack" ^[8][99][100]. EO 14318 defines a data center project as a facility requiring more than 100 MW of new load for AI, and counts as "Qualifying Projects" data center projects whose sponsors commit at least $500 million in capital expenditure or that add more than 100 MW of electric load, among other categories. It directs agencies to identify and create categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy Act and to launch financial support for qualifying projects that could include loans, loan guarantees, grants, tax incentives and offtake agreements; it also revoked Executive Order 14141 of January 14, 2025 ^[8]. Every Stargate site is well above these thresholds. On July 24, 2025 the Department of Energy selected four federal sites for private AI data center and energy projects: Idaho National Laboratory, the Oak Ridge Reservation, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and the Savannah River Site ^[101]. The PORTS-Pike campus that OpenAI joined in 2026 sits partly on remediated Department of Energy land at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant ^[92].

Critique and skepticism

Elon Musk

The sharpest early criticism came from Elon Musk, the founder of xAI and at the time one of Trump's closest advisers. On January 22, 2025 he wrote on X: "They don't actually have the money," adding, "SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority." Altman replied: "wrong, as you surely know. want to come visit the first site already under way? this is great for the country. i realize what is great for the country isn't always what's optimal for your companies, but in your new role i hope you'll mostly put (America) first." CNN noted that Musk was suing OpenAI and Altman ^[32]. A person familiar with Stargate told CNN that SoftBank had $24.3 billion of cash on its balance sheet and was comfortable taking on more debt, that MGX had $100 billion of capital commitments, that Oracle had $11 billion of cash and that OpenAI had raised more than $10 billion in its latest round ^[32].

In July 2025, after The Wall Street Journal reported that the project had stalled, Musk revisited his remark, writing, "They simply don't" ^[102]. According to The Information, the Abilene site had first been discussed for Musk's own xAI before Oracle and Crusoe turned to OpenAI ^[30].

Capital and capacity skepticism

Financial reporting questioned the figures from the start. Bloomberg asked in February 2025 whether the venture was reality or hype ^[35] and reported in May 2025 that it had hit snags over tariff fears ^[103]. In July 2025 The Wall Street Journal reported that six months after the launch the venture had not completed a single data center deal, that OpenAI and SoftBank disagreed over sites, including the use of SB Energy sites, and that it was aiming for a smaller data center in Ohio by the end of the year ^[86]. In August 2025 SoftBank's chief financial officer, Yoshimitsu Goto, said the project was proceeding "slower than usual." "There are a lot of options, and it's been taking time to select a good site," he said, adding that "there are a lot of stakeholders"; he still expected the roughly $500 billion target to be met within five years ^[104].

On December 12, 2025 Bloomberg reported that Oracle had pushed back completion of some data centers for OpenAI from 2027 to 2028 because of labor and material shortages. Oracle denied it. "There have been no delays to any sites required to meet our contractual commitments, and all milestones remain on track," spokesperson Michael Egbert said ^[105]. In February 2026 The Information reported that Stargate had turned into a three-way struggle over control of the planned data centers: OpenAI had wanted to own its sites, but its investors balked at the upfront cost, and the negotiations with Oracle and SoftBank delayed the buildout ^[85]. In March 2026 CNBC described OpenAI as accepting the role of a purchaser of cloud capacity rather than a builder of data centers; people familiar with the matter said OpenAI did not own any data centers and might not for the foreseeable future ^[67]. Analysts told CNBC that the September 2025 Nvidia-OpenAI agreement recalled the vendor financing that fed the dot-com bubble ^[67], a comparison that has become part of the wider debate over an AI bubble. Nvidia's financial role kept growing: by August 2026 it was providing credit support for an OpenAI campus ^[62][92][63].

Energy and water

Environmental and grid concerns have centered on Texas. ERCOT's April 2025 long-term forecast put peak demand as high as 218 GW by 2031, against a record of about 85.5 GW set in August 2023, driven largely by data centers ^[106]. Its preliminary April 2026 forecast reached 367,790 MW by 2032, a figure ERCOT itself said was likely higher than actual load growth would be ^[107]. Estimates of data center water use vary with method. A Houston Advanced Research Center and University of Houston Energy policy brief, cited by Texas Public Radio, put Texas data center consumption at 46 billion gallons in 2025, rising to as much as 399 billion gallons, about 7 percent of the state's water use, by 2030 ^[108]. A separate HARC estimate cited by the Texas Tribune put existing Texas data centers at about 25 billion gallons, 0.4 percent of state use, in 2025, rising to as much as 2.7 percent by 2030 ^[109]. The Stargate operators say their closed-loop designs use little water; OpenAI cited Abilene's mayor as saying the site would use half as much water in a year as the city uses in a day ^[5].

On-site gas generation drew criticism. Floodlight reported in July 2026 that the Abilene developers had built their power plant in stages using minor air permits, which avoid public scrutiny and extensive environmental review, and quoted former EPA air enforcement chief Bruce Buckheit: "All of this should have been rolled into one permit" ^[71]. Several newer sites also depend on on-site gas. Shackelford County's microgrid uses reciprocating engines, Project Jupiter's plan moved from gas turbines to gas-fueled fuel cells, and Epoch AI counted at least three of the seven U.S. sites using on-site natural gas plants ^[69][83][24].

Local opposition and community concerns

Opposition grew as sites moved from announcement to construction. Saline Township's board voted against rezoning before settling a developer lawsuit, and Michigan's attorney general appealed the approval of DTE's power contracts ^[89][60]. Lordstown banned future data centers ^[87]. Project Jupiter faced resistance from residents and environmental groups and became a political issue in New Mexico ahead of the 2026 midterm elections ^[23]. Residents and a conservation group sued over the approval process for OpenAI's Georgia campus ^[94]. In Abilene, Time documented worker-safety complaints and lawsuits ^[74]. The wider movement to pause new data centers is covered in AI data center moratorium.

OpenAI responded on January 20, 2026 with "Stargate Community" plans. "Across all of our Stargate Community plans, we commit to paying our own way on energy, so that our operations don't increase your electricity prices," it wrote, listing measures that range from funding new generation and grid upgrades to running campuses as flexible loads that cut consumption at times of peak demand or grid stress ^[5]. Later site announcements repeated the pledge, for example in Michigan and Georgia ^[91][93].

Strategic critique and the 2026 shift

Stargate rests on the bet that frontier training of large language models needs ever-larger dedicated campuses. OpenAI has kept making that case: in April 2026 it said "more compute enables better models, better models drive more usage, more usage improves products and revenue," and that it was evaluating sites as it planned "beyond the initial 10GW goal" ^[17]. The same post said "The financing models and partnership structures may evolve" ^[17]. By then OpenAI was relying on partners to build and finance its capacity while it competed with Anthropic and Google ^[47][67]. Altman acknowledged the difficulty in March 2026: "Anything at this scale, it's just like so much stuff goes wrong" ^[67].

Vendor concentration is another risk. The Abilene campus combines Crusoe-built buildings on Lancium land, a Crusoe, Blue Owl and Primary Digital Infrastructure financing venture, an Oracle lease, Nvidia hardware and a single customer, OpenAI ^[56][13]. A change in one layer reaches the others: when OpenAI and Oracle declined the Abilene expansion, Nvidia stepped in with a deposit and Microsoft ultimately took the capacity ^[18][19]. The September 2025 site announcements, with Oracle leading three sites and SoftBank two, spread that exposure across more developers without changing the single-customer logic ^[15].

Comparison with peer compute commitments

Stargate's $500 billion target should be read against the capital spending of the largest U.S. hyperscalers and platform companies, which mostly build for their own platforms and for many cloud customers rather than for a single outside tenant; see AI capex for detail.

The distinguishing feature of Stargate is that it builds for one customer, OpenAI, and that its capacity is financed by partners and lenders against OpenAI's commitments rather than by a single corporate balance sheet ^[1][67]. By the 2026 outlooks above, these four companies planned to spend more in that one year than Stargate's entire four-year target.

Timeline

Status as of October 2026

As of October 2026, Stargate is operating at one site, building at several others and smaller abroad than first announced. Abilene had 618 MW across six of its eight buildings delivered to OpenAI by September 2026 ^[14], next to a separate 900 MW Crusoe campus under development for Microsoft ^[19]. The Shackelford County, Port Washington and Saline Township campuses were under construction for Oracle, with Shackelford's first building scheduled for the second half of 2026 and Port Washington's completion for 2028 ^[83][80][81]. Project Jupiter in New Mexico faced permitting and pipeline delays and an Oracle force majeure notice ^[23]; Milam County's first building had a filed completion date of October 2026 ^[82]; and Lordstown was mainly an equipment plant ^[24]. Abroad, Stargate UAE's first 200 MW was still due in 2026 while the wider campus was being redesigned ^[22], Stargate UK was paused ^[20], OpenAI had stepped back from Norway ^[21], Stargate Argentina had not progressed beyond its letter of intent ^[25], and the Indian, Korean and Australian projects were at an early stage ^[26][27][28].

OpenAI says it has secured more than its original 10 GW goal ^[17], and the investment totals it has published, more than $450 billion by October 2025, describe planned spending over three years rather than capital raised ^[16]. Delivered capacity remains far below those figures ^[24][14]. What Stargate has clearly done is move OpenAI's compute supply away from exclusive reliance on Microsoft Azure ^[11][12][33] and anchor a wave of gigawatt-scale AI campuses in the United States built by specialist developers, financed by lenders and partners and leased to a single customer.

See also

• OpenAI
• Sam Altman
• Donald Trump
• America's AI Action Plan
• Executive Order on AI
• Microsoft
• Oracle
• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
• SoftBank
• MGX
• Nvidia
• Crusoe
• Abilene data center
• Stargate UAE
• Stargate Michigan
• Stargate Argentina
• PORTS Technology Campus
• List of AI compute deals
• AI capex
• AI data center moratorium
• Anthropic
• GPT-5
• Claude Opus 4.7
• Large language model

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75. ^"Oracle/OpenAI drop plans to expand flagship Abilene Stargate site, Meta in talks to pick up Crusoe capacity with Nvidia's help." Data Center Dynamics, 2026-03-06. datacenterdynamics.com/...pacity-with-nvidias-help
76. ^"Oracle hits back at Stargate data center cancellation reports - claims 4.5GW Oracle-OpenAI agreement still on track." Tom's Hardware, 2026-03-09. tomshardware.com/...eporting-on-stargate-expansion
77. ^"Microsoft is picking up a Texas data center project OpenAI didn't want, in a telling sign of how far they've drifted apart." Fortune, 2026-03-27. fortune.com/...en-ai-former-partner-cloud-provider
78. ^"OpenAI signs $300bn cloud deal with Oracle - report." Data Center Dynamics, 2025-09-11. datacenterdynamics.com/...-deal-with-oracle-report
79. ^1 ^2 ^3"Vantage breaks ground on Texas gigawatt data center campus for OpenAI." Data Center Dynamics, 2025-12-15. datacenterdynamics.com/...center-campus-for-openai
80. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5"OpenAI, Oracle and Vantage Data Centers Announce Stargate Data Center Site in Wisconsin." Vantage Data Centers, 2025-10-22. vantage-dc.com/...te-data-center-site-in-wisconsin
81. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4"Oracle and OpenAI start construction on Stargate data center campus in Saline Township, Michigan." Data Center Dynamics, 2026-06-02. datacenterdynamics.com/...saline-township-michigan
82. ^1 ^2 ^3"OpenAI Stargate's Milam, Texas, 'Freebird' data center to span 548,950 sq ft in first phase." Data Center Dynamics, 2026-04-21. datacenterdynamics.com/...950-sq-ft-in-first-phase
83. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5 ^6 ^7"Oracle trucks natural gas to data centers to bridge pipeline delays: Bloomberg." Yahoo Finance, 2026-10-09. finance.yahoo.com/...ks-natural-gas-data-150844664
84. ^1 ^2"Doña Ana County Approves $165 Billion IRB for Project Jupiter: A Transformative Leap for the New Mexico Borderplex." Global Trade Magazine, 2025-09-25. globaltrademag.com/...or-the-new-mexico-borderplex
85. ^1 ^2"Stargate AI data centers for OpenAI reportedly delayed by squabbles between partners - sources say OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank disagreed on who would have ultimate control of the planned data centers." Tom's Hardware, 2026-02-23. tomshardware.com/...ol-of-the-planned-data-centers
86. ^1 ^2"Open AI's massive Project Stargate is already struggling, may be scaled back." TechRadar, 2025-07-22. techradar.com/...ady-struggling-may-be-scaled-back
87. ^1 ^2"Lordstown bans future data centers." The Vindicator, 2025-11. vindy.com/...lordstown-bans-future-data-centers
88. ^"Lordstown looks to pass emergency ordinance to ban data centers, with some exemptions." WFMJ, 2025-10-06. wfmj.com/...-ban-data-centers-with-some-exemptions
89. ^1 ^2"Data Center Developer Takes a Small Michigan Farming Community to Court." Michigan Advance (Inside Climate News), 2025-10-27. michiganadvance.com/...-farming-community-to-court
90. ^"Saline Township data center faces potential funding snag." Michigan Advance, 2025-12-17. michiganadvance.com/...aces-potential-funding-snag
91. ^1 ^2"Building the infrastructure for the Intelligence Age in Michigan." OpenAI, 2026-06-01. openai.com/...stargate-michigan-data-center
92. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5"OpenAI joins PORTS-Pike project." OpenAI, 2026-08-17. openai.com/...openai-joins-ports-pike-project
93. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4"Building AI infrastructure with the Effingham County community." OpenAI, 2026-07-22. openai.com/...-with-the-effingham-county-community
94. ^1 ^2"Residents, conservation groups sue Effingham County Development Authority over secretive approval of OpenAI data center." Southern Environmental Law Center, 2026-09-21. selc.org/...cretive-approval-of-openai-data-center
95. ^"Introducing OpenAI for Countries." OpenAI, 2025-05-07. openai.com/...openai-for-countries
96. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4"Nscale, Aker and OpenAI to establish Stargate Norway: a 100,000 NVIDIA GPU AI Gigafactory powered by renewable energy in Northern Norway." Nscale, 2025-07-31. nscale.com/...stargate-norway-nscale-aker-openai
97. ^1 ^2"NextDC S7 Australian data center to offer 612MW of capacity, OpenAI Stargate planned as customer." Data Center Dynamics, 2026-07-02. datacenterdynamics.com/...-offer-612mw-of-capacity
98. ^"Stargate UAE's first phase to be completed in third quarter of 2026." The National, 2025-12-05. thenationalnews.com/...ed-in-third-quarter-of-2026
99. ^"Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government (Executive Order 14319)." Federal Register, 2025-07-28. federalregister.gov/...i-in-the-federal-government
100. ^"Promoting the Export of the American AI Technology Stack (Executive Order 14320)." Federal Register, 2025-07-28. federalregister.gov/...merican-ai-technology-stack
101. ^"DOE Announces Site Selection for AI Data Center and Energy Infrastructure Development on Federal Lands." U.S. Department of Energy, 2025-07-24. energy.gov/...y-infrastructure-development-federal
102. ^"Elon Musk Doubles Down On OpenAI-Softbank Stargate Doubts, Says They 'Simply Don't' Have Money For The $500 Billion AI Infrastructure Push." Benzinga, 2025-07. benzinga.com/...500-billion-ai-infrastructure-push
103. ^"SoftBank Stargate Venture With OpenAI Snags on Tariff Fears." Bloomberg, 2025-05-12. bloomberg.com/...openai-hits-snags-on-tariff-fears
104. ^"$500 billion Stargate AI infrastructure project struggles to get off the drawing board." The Register, 2025-08-08. theregister.com/...stargate_launch_delays
105. ^"Oracle denies report on OpenAI data center delays." BNN Bloomberg (Reuters), 2025-12-12. bnnbloomberg.ca/...rt-on-openai-data-center-delays
106. ^"Texas energy demand set to double by 2031." Spectrum News (Bay News 9), 2025-04-14. baynews9.com/...texas-energy-demand-2031
107. ^"Texas grid operator forecasts massive growth in demand, but says data is likely flawed." The Texas Tribune, 2026-04-17. texastribune.org/...ricity-ercot-load-forecast-puc
108. ^"Big Tech's big thirst, AI's demand for Texas water." Texas Public Radio, 2025-08-15. tpr.org/...s-big-thirst-ais-demand-for-texas-water
109. ^"Data centers are thirsty for Texas' water, but state planners don't know how much they will need." The Texas Tribune, 2025-09-25. texastribune.org/...texas-data-center-water-use
110. ^"Microsoft holds the line on AI spending plans." CFO Dive, 2026-07-30. cfodive.com/...826648
111. ^"2026 Q2 Earnings Call Transcript." Alphabet, 2026-07-22. s206.q4cdn.com/...2026_Q2_Earnings_Transcript.pdf
112. ^"Andy Jassy said Amazon will spend $220 billion this year, and still won't have enough capacity to meet demand." Fortune, 2026-07-30. fortune.com/...sy-amazon-capex-demand-aws-pga-tour
113. ^"Meta Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results." Meta Platforms (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1), 2026-07-29. sec.gov/...meta-06302026xexhibit991