OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank Announce Five AI Data Centers
In a big push to the US AI industry, OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank on Wednesday announced five new US AI data center sites under Stargate, OpenAI’s overarching AI infrastructure platform with more than $400 billion in investment.
The combined capacity from these five new sites, along with OpenAI’s flagship site in Abilene, Texas, and ongoing projects with CoreWeave, brings Stargate to nearly 7 GW of planned capacity, putting OpenAI on a clear path to securing the full $500 billion and 10 GW commitment by the end of 2025, ahead of schedule.
In July, OpenAI and Oracle entered an agreement to develop up to 4.5 GW of additional Stargate capacity. This represents a partnership that exceeds $300 billion between the two companies over the next five years.
The three new sites—located in Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; and a site in the Midwest, which is expect to be announce soon; combined with an additional potential expansion of 600 MW near the flagship Stargate site in Abilene, Texas can deliver over 5.5 GW of capacity.
Together, these sites are expected to create over 25,000 onsite jobs, and tens of thousands of additional jobs across the US. OpenAI is in the process of evaluating additional sites.
The other two Stargate sites can scale to 1.5 GW over the next 18 months and they will be developed through a partnership by SoftBank and OpenAI that can scale to multiple gigawatts of AI infrastructure.
One of the sites is located in Lordstown, Ohio, where SoftBank has broken ground on an advanced data center design which is on track to be operational next year. The other site is located in Milam County, Texas, and will be developed in partnership with SB Energy, a SoftBank Group company, which is providing powered infrastructure for a fast-build data center site.
“Together, these sites represent an important step in enabling faster deployment, greater scalability, and improved cost efficiency—making high-performance compute more widely accessible,” OpenAI said.
The five new sites were chosen through a rigorous nationwide process launched in January. OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank reviewed over 300 proposals from more than 30 states and today’s announcement marks the first set of selections, with the additional US sites to come as OpenAI complete and surpass its initial commitment to invest $500 billion in the US AI infrastructure.
The new Stargate sites being developed by Oracle will join the flagship Stargate campus in Abilene, Texas, which is already up and running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and continues to progress rapidly.
Oracle began delivering the first NVIDIA GB200 racks in June. We have already started early training and inference workloads, using this new capacity to advance OpenAI’s next-generation research.
Compute is the Key
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that AI can only fulfil its promise if they 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,” Sam Altman said.
Oracle CEO Clay Magouryk said that his company’s reliable, scalable, and secure AI infrastructure is helping OpenAI rapidly scale its business. To meet this enormous demand, they were expanding OCI’s footprint at an unrivalled pace to deliver the most performant and cost-effective AI training and inferencing.
SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son said that 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 their Stargate partners, SoftBank was paving the way for a new era which AI advances humanity.
OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank first announced the $500 billion Stargate commitment in January at the White House alongside the US President Donald Trump, as part of a broader push to spur investment in American AI infrastructure.
“Together with Oracle, SoftBank, and our other partners, we are turning a $500 billion, 10 GW commitment into large-scale physical infrastructure, jobs in communities across the country, and compute that will unlock the next generation of AI breakthroughs,” OpenAI added.
