Stargate Community

OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that AGI benefits all of humanity, and in order to do that, we are working to ensure our Stargate campuses benefit the local communities that make them possible. We believe that AI infrastructure⁠(opens in a new window) is vital for American competitiveness and economic opportunity, while boosting local economies by creating jobs and bringing in local revenue.

When we announced Stargate one year ago in January 2025, we set out to expand our U.S. AI infrastructure to 10GW by 2029—and just one year in, we are already well beyond halfway to that goal in planned capacity, with the first site in Abilene, Texas already training and serving frontier AI systems and multiple Stargate sites under development across Texas, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Michigan. We are committed to working with communities to ensure that our Stargate campuses are built and run in a way that strengthens communities and demonstrates that we’re being good neighbors.

AI is delivering tangible benefits already, from helping hundreds of millions of people with their health and wellness every week to unlocking new scientific advances. At the same time, we are making the AI models themselves much more capable and power efficient each year. As we’ve done so, demand has increased even more, since intelligence can more affordably be applied to more important problems, and there’s no limit to the problems that people want to solve. That’s why we and the industry see a critical need for such large-scale AI infrastructure.

Partnering with local communities starts with understanding local needs. Going forward, every Stargate site will have its own locally tailored Stargate Community plan, driven by community input and local concerns. They will all rest on this same core premise: Stargate is a partnership with communities, and we can only achieve our mission by being good neighbors.

Across all of our Stargate Community plans, we commit to paying our own way on energy, so that our operations don’t increase your electricity prices. Every community and region has unique energy needs and grid conditions, and our commitment will be tailored to the region. Depending on the site, this can range from bringing new dedicated power and storage that the project fully funds, to adding and paying for new energy generation and transmission resources. This commitment can be grounded in specific approaches like:

1. Funding the incremental generation and grid upgrades our load requires
2. Planning transparently and proactively with local utilities, transmission providers, state utility regulators (public utility/service commissions) and regional grid operators
3. Working with utilities, grid operators, and the industry to develop strategies for operating AI campuses as flexible loads, so when peak conditions or grid stress are forecast, we can reduce or curtail consumption and participate in demand-response and grid-stability programs

We are already working with partners to deliver this on existing Stargate campuses. For example:

• In Wisconsin⁠(opens in a new window), our partners Oracle and Vantage are working with WEC Energy Group to develop new energy generation and capacity, including solar and battery storage. Our developer partners are also underwriting 100% of the power infrastructure investment through a dedicated electricity rate from WEC. The proposed rate is designed to protect other customers from price increases associated with the new investments needed to serve the facility.
• In Michigan⁠(opens in a new window), our partners Oracle and Related Digital are working with DTE Energy to supply the project’s power using existing resources, augmented by a new battery storage investment financed entirely by the project. The structure is designed to help ensure there is no impact on DTE’s existing customers’ energy supply or rates. DTE customers can also benefit from the project contributing its share to the fixed costs of maintaining and improving the grid.
• In Texas, our partners SB Energy plans to fund and build new energy generation and storage to supply the majority of the power needed to run the Stargate campus we’re developing together in Milam County.

We’re also encouraged to see one of our key providers, Microsoft, announce community-first AI commitments⁠(opens in a new window), which apply to the AI campuses they build for us.

These are early examples, and we’ll continue to find meaningful ways to benefit local communities including:

• Minimizing water use and protecting local ecosystems by prioritizing closed-loop or low-water cooling systems. AI campuses and deep learning workloads use innovations in cooling water systems design that drastically reduce the water use compared to traditional datacenters. Water required by our facilities should be a fraction of a community’s overall water use. As Mayor Weldon Hurt of Abilene, Texas noted,⁠(opens in a new window) the water use at the Abilene site in a year will be half as much as Abilene uses in a single day. These designs are used across all of our Stargate AI campuses - including with Oracle in Abilene⁠(opens in a new window) and Shackelford County⁠(opens in a new window), Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico⁠(opens in a new window); Saline Township, Michigan⁠(opens in a new window), Port Washington, Wisconsin⁠(opens in a new window) and our latest AI campus with Microsoft in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin.⁠(opens in a new window) This approach is paired with site-specific environmental and infrastructure investments developed with local partners. For example, in Wisconsin our partners will invest a minimum of $175M in local infrastructure upgrades and water restoration projects.⁠(opens in a new window)
• Investing early in local jobs and workforce pathways by establishing OpenAI Academies as the backbone of regional workforce development in Stargate communities. These Academies will be customized for each site, delivering credentials and clear pathways into high-quality jobs aligned with local employers and the region’s evolving AI economy. We will launch our first Stargate community OpenAI Academy in Abilene, Texas this spring. We are also engaging alongside our partners with labor unions and workforce partners to support the skilled trades and technical workforce needed to build and operate AI infrastructure at this scale.

Stargate is a physical infrastructure program that requires deep partnership. We’re reliant on and grateful to the communities that make it possible, and we are committed to showing up as long-term partners.