ABILENE (AP) – Microsoft is taking over a data center construction project in Texas after OpenAI declined to pursue it, in a move that will make the two companies neighbors at one of the nation\u2019s largest complexes for running artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
Data center developer Crusoe said Friday it is working with Microsoft to build two new \u201cAI factory\u201d buildings and an on-site power plant in Abilene, Texas, right next to where Crusoe has been building an even larger computing campus for OpenAI and Oracle.<\/p>\n
OpenAI\u2019s existing project, the flagship of a broader initiative called Stargate, is so massive that President Donald Trump was the first to officially announce it just after his inauguration last year to signal AI investments he called a \u201cresounding declaration of confidence in America\u2019s potential.\u201d<\/p>\n
Microsoft was once OpenAI\u2019s exclusive cloud computing provider and still holds a roughly 27% stake in the ChatGPT maker, but the two companies are increasingly pursuing AI development separately, even though they are on the same tract of land.<\/p>\n
Crusoe has already completed two buildings for OpenAI and its other cloud partner, Oracle, supplying a surge of computing power that helps build and operate technology like ChatGPT. SoftBank was also an investment partner. Crusoe is still completing six more buildings for OpenAI and Oracle due to be completed by the end of this year.<\/p>\n
OpenAI said earlier this month that it dropped plans to expand its Abilene project even further.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur flagship Stargate site is one of the largest AI data center campuses in the United States,\u201d said Sachin Katti, OpenAI\u2019s head of compute infrastructure, in a post on X. \u201cWe considered expanding it further, but ultimately chose to put that additional capacity in other locations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Katti said OpenAI has more than half a dozen sites under development across the United States, including one it is building with Oracle in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n
Microsoft\u2019s additional two Abilene facilities announced Friday will bring the total number to 10 data center buildings, expected to supply a stunning 2.1 gigawatts of computing capacity from what was once a vast tract of mesquite shrub lands, home to coyote and roadrunners.<\/p>\n
Originally planned as a facility to mine cryptocurrency, developers pivoted and expanded their designs after ChatGPT sparked an AI boom.<\/p>\n
Crusoe co-founder and CEO Chase Lochmiller said in a written statement that a new power plant attached to the Microsoft project will be able to generate 900 megawatts to \u201ccontinue building the industrial foundation for American AI \u2014 at a velocity the industry has never seen.\u201d<\/p>\n
That will be larger than the existing 350-megawatt, gas-fired power plant attached to the OpenAI and Oracle project. Oracle has previously described that on-site plant as a backup source of power, since the data centers primarily draw from the region\u2019s electricity grid, which includes power supplied by nearby wind farms.<\/p>\n
The AI race has been complicating tech companies\u2019 commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, most of which come from the burning of gas, oil and coal and drive climate change. \u201cWe\u2019re burning gas to run this data center,\u201d OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said while visiting Abilene last year, adding that \u201cin the long trajectory of Stargate\u201d the hope is to rely on many other power sources. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ABILENE (AP) – Microsoft is taking over a data center construction project in Texas after OpenAI declined to pursue it, in a move that will make the two companies neighbors at one of the nation\u2019s largest complexes for running artificial intelligence. Data center developer Crusoe said Friday it is working with Microsoft to build two … Continue reading Microsoft takes over a Texas AI data center expansion after OpenAI backs away<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2851],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1491903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news-archive"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-06 21:31:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1491903"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1492455,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491903\/revisions\/1492455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1491903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1491903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1491903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}