ABILENE, Texas — OpenAI and Oracle
The debut site in Abilene, Texas, about 180 miles west of Dallas, is up and running, filled with Oracle Cloud infrastructure and racks of Nvidia chips.
The data center, which is being leased by Oracle, is one of the most notable physical landmarks to emerge from an unprecedented boom in demand for infrastructure to power AI. Over $2 trillion in AI infrastructure has been planned around the world, according to an HSBC estimate this week.
OpenAI is leading the way.
In addition to the $500 billion Stargate project, the startup on Monday announced an equity investment deal with NvidiaMicrosoft
One building on the Abilene site is operational while another is nearly complete. The campus has the potential to ultimately scale past a gigawatt of capacity, OpenAI finance chief Sarah Friar told CNBC. That would be enough electricity to power about 750,000 U.S. homes.
The data center construction plans are important enough that NvidiaCNBC reported earlier on Tuesday.
“People are starting to recognize just the sheer scale that will be required,” Friar said. “We’re just getting going here in Abilene, Texas, but you’ll see this all around the United States and beyond.”
The scale of the project’s construction was necessary to supply the amount of compute required to operate OpenAI’s models, Friar said.
“What we see today is a massive compute crunch,” she said. “There’s not enough compute to do all the things that AI can do.”
A bold bet on AI infrastructure
OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank
While companies like Oracle are helping fund the data center construction, OpenAI will ultimately be the one to pay for the computing capacity as an operating expense, Friar said. Although Nvidia is putting in equity to jumpstart the project, Friar said the chipmaker will get paid for all graphics processing units (GPUs) that it provides as those chips get deployed.
Friar said OpenAI will generate $13 billion in revenue this year, and that the company plans to help pay for the construction using its own cash flow and debt financing.
The Stargate name will refer to all OpenAI infrastructure projects going forward, CNBC reported this week. Together with CoreWeave
Friar told CNBC the shovels going into the ground today are laying foundations for compute that won’t come online until 2026, starting with Nvidia next-generation Vera Rubin chips.
“No one in the history of man built data centers this fast,” Friar said, adding that the entire ecosystem has to work together to meet demand.
Critics have questioned the circular funding behind Stargate — OpenAI committing hundreds of billions of dollars to projects while suppliers like Nvidia are also investing directly into those same buildouts.
Friar said history shows that technology booms require bold infrastructure bets.
“When the internet was getting started, people kept feeling like, ‘Oh, we’re over-building, there’s too much,'” Friar said. “Look where we are today, right?”
The project also carries political weight. OpenAI and Oracle first unveiled Stargate alongside President Donald Trump at the White House in January. Friar called Trump “the president of this AI era,” pointing to Washington’s role in framing the technology as both an economic engine and a national security priority. Trump was briefed on the Nvidia investment into OpenAI during a state visit to the U.K. earlier this month.
Oracle says the project will employ more than 6,000 construction workers daily and deliver nearly 1,700 long-term jobs.
In a paper published Tuesday about OpenAI’s infrastructure plans, the company wrote that its data center buildout could help reshape the American power grid with new technologies and help the U.S. exert global influence.
— CNBC’s Kif Leswing contributed to this story.
WATCH: OpenAI CFO: Need partners like Oracle and Microsoft to meet demand