OpenAI has announced it will build five new data centers across the US as part of its sprawling $500 billion Stargate project, and claims this will help give it access to 7GW of IT capacity over the next three years.

Working with Oracle, the ChatGPT-maker says it will open new data centers in Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; and an unnamed site in the Midwest. Together with a potential 600MW of additional capacity at the flagship Stargate data center in Abilene, Texas, this would provide 5.5GW of capacity, the company said.

No further details about the new data centers have been released, but the Shackelford County site is likely the 1.4GW campus announced by Vantage earlier this year. The first building is set to come online in 2026, and Bloomberg has previously reported that Oracle intends to lease the site to run AI servers.

Doña Ana County will soon be home to Project Jupiter, a hyperscale data center campus being planned by Stack and BorderPlex Digital Assets. The two companies announced in July that they intend to spend $165 billion on the scheme, though timelines and project capacity were not revealed. It is not clear if this is the site being targeted by OpenAI and Oracle.

Earlier this month, it was reported that OpenAI had signed a contract for cloud services from Oracle worth $300 billion over five years.

OpenAI is also working with SoftBank on two data centers that it claims can scale to 1.5GW over the next 18 months.

One site is located in Lordstown, Ohio, where SoftBank has broken ground on what is described as “an advanced data center design which is on track to be operational next year.”

The second site is located in Milam County, Texas, and will be developed in partnership with SB Energy, SoftBank Group’s energy subsidiary that will provide powered infrastructure for a fast-build data center site.

Stargate was launched by OpenAI in January, in partnership with SoftBank, Oracle, and Abu Dhabi's MGX. At the time, it claimed it would invest $500 billion in digital infrastructure over the next four years to serve OpenAI's compute needs.

The latest announcements take the project to “nearly 7GW of planned capacity and over $400 billion in investment over the next three years,” OpenAI said. “This puts us on a clear path to securing the full $500 billion, 10GW commitment we announced in January by the end of 2025, ahead of schedule.”

While much theoretical data center space has been committed to Stargate, only a fraction of it has been delivered to date, and how many of the projects will be funded remains open to question. OpenAI loses billions of dollars each year.

Since the launch, OpenAI has also announced Stargate data centers in Norway, the United Arab Emirates, and the UK.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said: “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. 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.”