OpenAI is scouring the U.S. for sites to build a network of huge data centers to power its artificial intelligence technology, expanding beyond a flagship Texas location and looking across 16 states to accelerate the Stargate project championed by President Donald Trump.
The maker of ChatGPT put out a request for proposals for land, electricity, engineers and architects and began visiting locations in Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin this week.
Trump touted Stargate, a newly formed joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, shortly after returning to the White House last month.
The partnership said it is investing $100 billion — and eventually up to $500 billion — to build large-scale data centers and the energy generation needed to further AI development. Trump called the project a “resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential” under his new administration, though the first project in Abilene, Texas, has been under construction for months.
Elon Musk, a Trump adviser and fierce rival of OpenAI who is in a legal fight with the company and its CEO Sam Altman, has publicly questioned the value of Stargate’s investments.
After Trump’s announcement, a number of states reached out to OpenAI about welcoming additional data centers, Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s vice president of global affairs, told reporters Thursday.
The company’s request for proposals calls for sites with “proximity to necessary infrastructure including power and water.”
AI uses vast amounts of energy, much of which comes from burning fossil fuels, which causes climate change. Data centers also typically draw in large amounts of water for cooling. Some tech giants have started financing nuclear power to plug into their data centers.
OpenAI’s proposal makes no mention of whether it intends to prioritize renewable energy sources such as wind or solar to power the data centers. But it says electricity providers should have a plan to manage carbon emissions and water usage.
“There’s some sites we’re looking at where we want to help be part of the process that brings new power to that site, either from new gas deployment or other means,” said Keith Heyde, who directs OpenAI’s infrastructure strategy.
The first Texas project is in a region Abilene Mayor Weldon Hurt has described to media as rich in multiple energy sources, including wind, solar and gas. Also describing it that way is the company that began building the AI data center campus there in June — the same two “big, beautiful buildings” that Altman showed off in a recent drone video posted on social media.
Crusoe CEO Chase Lochmiller said that wind power is central to the project his company is building, though it will also have a gas-fired generator for backup power.
“We try to build data centers in locations where we can access low-cost, clean and abundant energy resources,” Lochmiller said. “West Texas really fits that mold where it’s one of the most consistently windy and sunny places in the United States.”
Lochmiller said he expects the Trump administration, despite the president’s opposition to wind farms, to be pragmatic in supporting wind-powered data centers when it is “actually the cheapest way to access energy.”
Data centers consumed about 4.4% of all U.S. electricity in 2023 and that’s expected to increase to 6.7% to 12% of total U.S. electricity by 2028, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The other states where OpenAI is actively looking include Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Utah, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia. Heyde said the company only plans to build “somewhere between five to 10” campuses in total, depending on how large each one is.
OpenAI previously relied on business partner Microsoft for its computing needs. But the two companies recently amended their partnership to enable OpenAI to pursue data center development on its own.
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