Stargate, the audacious $500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle Corp., and SoftBank Group, showed off its first large-scale data center in Abilene, Texas – a complex jam-packed with equipment that could tax energy demands.
The eight-building complex – opened to a group of politician and media on Tuesday – will eventually house hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA Corp.’s artificial intelligence (AI) chips, and is stuffed with server racks housing NVIDIA’s GB200 GPUs that necessitate about 900 megawatts of power when finished.
Organizers of the joint venture also outlined plans for five more data centers across the country — two more facilities in Texas, plus one each in New Mexico, Ohio, and an undisclosed Midwest location in their bid to make good on a $500 billion infrastructure investment promoted by President Donald Trump in January. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who attended the opening ceremony, declared that “Texas is ground zero for AI.”
The eight-building complex will likely be the planet’s largest AI supercluster when completed, Oracle executives said, before they hastily downplayed its potential impact on the environment. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle co-CEO Clay Magouyrk addressed concerns surrounding the energy-intensive facility, which is located in a drought-prone region of West Texas where temperatures approached 100 degrees on Tuesday.
“We’re burning gas to run this data center,” Altman said, noting that “in the long trajectory of Stargate,” the goal is to incorporate multiple power sources.
The complex features a dedicated gas-fired power plant equipped with natural gas turbines similar to those used in naval vessels. Company officials describe the facility as a backup power source for the data centers, calling it a superior alternative to conventional diesel generators. The majority of electricity comes from the regional power grid, which draws from natural gas plants and the extensive wind and solar installations across the area’s wind-swept and sun-drenched landscape.
The facility will consume approximately 900 megawatts of electricity to power its eight buildings and hundreds of thousands of specialized AI processors. For now, the facility employs more than 6,000 construction workers daily, providing what Abilene Mayor Weldon Hurt called a significant economic boost to the area. Oracle projects the campus will create nearly 1,700 on-site jobs when fully operational, with thousands of additional indirect positions expected.
The partnership initially announced a $100 billion investment commitment, with potential expansion to $500 billion, aimed at constructing large-scale data centers and supporting energy infrastructure to advance AI development. In a separate recent agreement, OpenAI committed to purchasing $300 billion in computing capacity from Oracle.
