Generative AI firm OpenAI is exploring its options to develop data centers in more than a dozen states across the US for its Stargate venture.
As reported by CNBC and others, OpenAI executives said this week that the company is considering building data center campuses in 16 states that have indicated “real interest” in hosting the company.
OpenAI executives said it sent out a request for proposals (RFP) to states less than a week ago. The company is aiming to develop five to ten campuses – each able to support 1GW of capacity or more.
“A project of this size represents an opportunity to both re-industrialize parts of the country, but also to help revitalize where the American Dream is going to go in this intelligence age,” Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s vice president of global policy, said on the call.
The 16 states OpenAI is currently considering are Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.
Long an exclusive customer of Microsoft, OpenAI has been working on its own major data center projects since at least early 2024 in order to meet its increasing capacity needs. The resulting venture, known as Stargate, seeks to develop gigawatt-scale campuses all over the US.
Officially announced earlier this year, OpenAI has partnered with Oracle, SoftBank, and Abu Dhabi's MGX on the venture, which could eventually total more than $500 billion.
Stargate’s maiden project is a large-scale data center campus in Abilene. Texas. Crusoe is developing a campus in partnership with Oracle on land owned by Lancium.
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar recently said that the company is "aiming to secure land and power for multiple locations across Texas," beyond just Abilene. She added: "We’re also evaluating potential sites in Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Wisconsin, with site visits happening next week."
One of the other Texas sites may be a 250-acre property located near Colorado City. SoftBank recently invested in cryptomining data center firm Cipher Mining, with the deal giving SoftBank a period of exclusivity of acquiring Cipher’s planned 300MW Barber Lake campus. The investment was made via SoftBank subsidiary Star Beacon LLC.
After previously being OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider, Microsoft now has a right of first refusal to serve the AI firm. Microsoft is not an equity partner of Stargate – though it remains a major shareholder in OpenAI itself.
