OpenAI Takes First Steps For ‘Stargate’ Data Centres

OpenAI has begun considering proposals from 16 US states for possible locations for massive AI data centres under the Stargate plan unveiled by the US presidential administration last month.

The company said it put out a request for proposals (RFP) to states last week for land, electricity, engineers and architects and visited locations in Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s vice president of global policy said on a call with reporters that the Stargate project was an opportunity to “help revitalize where the American Dream is going to go in this intelligence age”.

The project, backed by companies including Oracle and SoftBank, aims to invest $100 billion (£81bn) initially in data centres, with up to $500bn in investments planned over the next four years.

Infrastructure build-out

OpenAI said it is currently considering projects in Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia.

The first project in Abilene, Texas, began months ago and new projects will be announced on a “rolling basis” going forward, Lehane’s presentation said.

OpenAI is aiming to build five to 10 data centres in all, but the number depends upon the size of each and how much processing power they provide.

The company said it expects each data centre to provide thousands of jobs, but the Abilene project may lead to the creation of only 57 jobs, according to local media reports.

The request for proposals calls for sites with proximity to necessary infrastructure including power and water, underscoring the vast amounts of each that such data centres can consume.

Keith Heyde, OpenAI’s director of infrastructure strategy and deployment, said the firm was looking into a “light water-footprint design” for data centres, but didn’t provide details.

Lehane said the popularity of Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek was adding urgency to US companies efforts to compete.

European plans

DeepSeek made it “really clear that this is a very real competition, and the stakes could not be bigger”, he said.

DeepSeek said its AI models perform on par with competitors but were developed for a fraction of the cost.

China is also involved in a massive build-out of computing capacity to support technologies such as AI.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, speaking at a panel discussion at the Technical University of Berlin on Friday, said the company would “love” to be involved in a Stargate-like plan for Europe.

The company is opening an office in Munich as part of its European expansion plans, which have seen it open offices in Dublin and London in 2023 and Paris and Brussels last year.