The Tool Desk
Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank announced five new U.S. Stargate sites on September 23, 2025—but they were announced projects, not five completed data centers. The locations were identified as Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; Wisconsin; Lordstown, Ohio; and Milam County, Texas. OpenAI said the broader Stargate portfolio represented nearly 7 gigawatts of planned capacity and more than $400 billion in investment over three years at that point.
For households, investors and workers, the important distinction is between planned capacity, construction, energized facilities and operating AI workloads. The five-site announcement has since become part of a larger U.S. infrastructure program that includes a Michigan campus and later capacity claims.
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The five sites at a glance
| Site | State | Primary partners | What was announced | How to read the status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shackelford County | Texas | Oracle and OpenAI | Part of the Oracle-related expansion | Announced project; the September release did not establish that it was operational. |
| Doña Ana County | New Mexico | Oracle and OpenAI | Part of the Oracle-related expansion | Announced project; capacity was included in broader planned figures. |
| Wisconsin | Wisconsin | Oracle, OpenAI and Vantage Data Centers | The unnamed Midwest site from the original announcement | Identified later; Oracle and Vantage were named in the subsequent clarification. |
| Lordstown | Ohio | SoftBank and OpenAI | Designed to scale as part of the SoftBank-related buildout | OpenAI described it as on track to become operational in 2026, but that does not by itself prove operation or full capacity. |
| Milam County | Texas | SoftBank, OpenAI and SB Energy | A site designed to scale to 1.2 gigawatts | In January 2026, SB Energy was selected to build and operate the facility. |
The locations and partner split come from OpenAI’s September 2025 announcement. The Midwest site was later identified as Wisconsin, with Oracle partnering with Vantage Data Centers.
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The September announcement covered five new sites: three associated with Oracle and two associated with SoftBank. OpenAI said the projects, the flagship Abilene, Texas campus and ongoing CoreWeave projects together represented nearly 7 GW of planned capacity and more than $400 billion in investment over three years.
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Those figures describe a portfolio of announced and developing infrastructure. They are not proof that $400 billion had already been spent, that every site had been financed in full, or that nearly 7 GW was already supplying AI workloads.
The announcement also mentioned a potential 600-megawatt expansion near Abilene. That expansion was separate from the five new sites and should not be counted as a sixth new data center—or folded into the five-site count without explanation.
Oracle and SoftBank are not building identical three-company projects
The headline can make Stargate sound like one uniform construction venture in which OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank jointly build each facility. The actual structure is more complicated.
Oracle-related projects
Oracle was associated with the Shackelford County, Doña Ana County and Wisconsin projects. Oracle separately announced an agreement with OpenAI in July 2025 to develop up to 4.5 GW of additional Stargate capacity. OpenAI said that broader Oracle agreement exceeded $300 billion between the companies over five years and estimated more than 100,000 jobs across construction, operations, manufacturing and local services. That larger estimate should not be treated as a job count for only the five September sites.
OpenAI also said more than 2 million chips were expected to run across the additional Oracle-related capacity under development. This was a planned deployment estimate, not a count of chips already installed.
SoftBank-related projects
Lordstown and Milam County were the two SoftBank-related sites. Milam County was to be developed with SB Energy, a SoftBank Group company. In January 2026, OpenAI and SoftBank each invested $500 million in SB Energy, and OpenAI selected SB Energy to build and operate the previously announced 1.2-GW Milam County site.
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According to the companies, the Milam County design aims to minimize water use and includes new generation intended to protect Texas ratepayers. That is a project-specific commitment—not evidence that every Stargate campus will have the same water or energy profile.
What Stargate is
Stargate is an infrastructure platform, not the name of one building. It encompasses data-center development, cloud services, AI chips, energy, financing, construction and operations.
The original January 2025 Stargate announcement described an intended $500 billion investment over four years, with $100 billion to be deployed immediately. It named SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX as initial equity funders. SoftBank was assigned financial responsibility, while OpenAI was assigned operational responsibility.
The broader technology and infrastructure network includes Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, CoreWeave, Vantage Data Centers, SB Energy and construction and real-estate partners. Their roles vary by project. Microsoft, for example, was expected to continue providing cloud services to OpenAI even as Stargate added physical infrastructure.
What the capacity numbers mean
A gigawatt is a measure of power, not a count of buildings. In data-center announcements, “GW” can refer to different stages or concepts:
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- Planned power capacity for a campus or portfolio
- Potential or scalable future capacity
- IT load available to computing equipment
- Capacity under development or contracted
- Power that has been energized
- Capacity actually running training or inference workloads
These distinctions matter. A campus may be designed to scale to a stated maximum while only part of that capacity is built, connected to the grid or filled with operating servers. The September 2025 figures combined current, planned, potential and scalable elements, so they should not be presented as operating capacity.
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How the project changed after September 2025
- January 21, 2025: OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle and MGX announced Stargate, including the intended $500 billion and 10-GW U.S. commitment.
- July 22, 2025: OpenAI and Oracle announced up to 4.5 GW of additional capacity.
- September 23, 2025: The five new U.S. sites were announced.
- October 22, 2025: The previously unnamed Midwest site was identified as Wisconsin.
- October 30, 2025: OpenAI announced a Stargate campus in Saline Township, Michigan, and said the broader portfolio had reached more than 8 GW of planned capacity and over $450 billion in investment over three years.
- January 9, 2026: OpenAI and SoftBank announced the SB Energy partnership, including the 1.2-GW Milam County project.
- April 29, 2026: OpenAI said Stargate had surpassed its initial 10-GW milestone and added more than 3 GW in the preceding 90 days.
- June 1, 2026: OpenAI said construction had begun on “The Barn,” a 1-GW Stargate campus in Saline Township, Michigan.
That timeline is why a current article should not describe the September announcement as the final Stargate plan. Michigan is an additional campus, and later OpenAI statements describe a portfolio larger than the original five-site announcement.
What was already operating?
OpenAI later said the flagship Abilene campus was operating on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with NVIDIA GB200 systems, with early training and inference workloads underway. Abilene was the original flagship campus, not one of the five new sites announced in September 2025.
The available announcements do not establish that all five newly announced sites were operational, energized or running at their stated maximum capacity. Lordstown was described as on track for operation in 2026; Milam County received a more detailed build-and-operate arrangement in January 2026; and the Wisconsin, Shackelford County and Doña Ana County announcements identify projects without establishing identical construction milestones.
Who pays, builds and operates the facilities?
There is no single answer for every campus:
- OpenAI: The principal AI customer, with operational responsibility for Stargate and responsibility for specifying and using the infrastructure.
- SoftBank: A lead partner assigned financial responsibility in the original announcement and involved in design, energy development and SB Energy.
- Oracle: A major infrastructure and cloud partner developing substantial capacity and operating the Abilene campus through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
- SB Energy: A SoftBank Group company selected to build and operate the Milam County facility and provide related energy infrastructure.
- Other partners: NVIDIA supplies accelerators; Microsoft continues its cloud relationship with OpenAI; CoreWeave, Vantage, construction firms, real-estate developers, lenders and energy companies participate in different parts of the broader network.
The $500 billion figure is therefore a long-term infrastructure commitment, not necessarily a single upfront payment from OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank. Project finance, equity, leases, debt and outside capital can all be part of the structure. For example, the Michigan campus announcement referenced Related Digital equity, Blackstone-affiliated funds and long-term debt financing anchored by PIMCO-managed funds.
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Electricity and the grid
AI campuses require far more than buildings and servers. They need generation, transmission, substations, cooling, permits, land and construction labor. OpenAI has identified those requirements as factors in choosing sites.
The financial question for residents is who pays for that infrastructure. New generation and transmission may be funded by project developers, utilities, customers, taxpayers or a combination. The Milam County plan emphasizes protecting Texas ratepayers, and the Michigan project also includes a commitment that local ratepayers should not bear the campus’s infrastructure costs. Those commitments reduce a stated risk, but they do not independently prove that households will face no indirect costs through taxes, utility planning, transmission charges or public incentives.
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Jobs and wages
OpenAI estimated that the five-site announcement would create more than 25,000 onsite jobs and tens of thousands of additional jobs across the United States. These are company estimates and may include construction, operations and related activity. They should not be confused with permanent jobs at each campus.
The broader Oracle partnership carried a separate estimate of more than 100,000 jobs across construction, operations, manufacturing and local services. In Michigan, Oracle said more than 700 tradespeople were working on the campus as of June 1, 2026. Construction employment can be substantial but temporary; the number, pay and skill mix of permanent data-center jobs will vary by site.
Water, land and community impacts
Cooling can make water demand an important local issue. The Milam County announcement specifically says the site was designed to minimize water use. That does not establish a common cooling design across the five sites or the wider Stargate portfolio.
Residents may also care about land use, noise, construction traffic, local tax incentives, housing demand, industrial-service jobs and the effect of new transmission infrastructure. A project can bring construction spending and tax revenue while still creating costs that are distributed unevenly across a community.
The main risks to the buildout
- Power availability: A site can be announced before generation and transmission are ready.
- Permitting and community support: Zoning, environmental reviews and local opposition can affect schedules.
- Financing: A multiyear commitment still depends on project-level capital, contracts and credit conditions.
- Chip supply: Planned capacity depends on obtaining large volumes of advanced accelerators and networking equipment.
- Construction: Specialized electrical, cooling and high-density data-center work can face labor and supply-chain constraints.
- Technology changes: New accelerator generations and higher rack densities may require retrofits, even if a facility is designed for flexibility.
- Customer concentration: Stargate relies on OpenAI demand and a relatively small group of infrastructure, energy and financing partners.
- Operating economics: A campus designed for a maximum load may not run at that level continuously, affecting utilization and returns.
How to judge future Stargate updates
When a company announces another gigawatt or another campus, ask which stage the figure represents:
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- Contracted or financed: Agreements and funding commitments exist, though terms may vary.
- Under construction: Physical work has begun, but the facility may be years from operation.
- Energized: The site has access to electrical power.
- Operational: Servers are installed and workloads are running.
- At scale: The campus is operating near its stated usable capacity.
This framework prevents the common mistake of treating a planned gigawatt as an operating data center or treating a long-term investment target as money already spent.
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