OpenAI Stargate Data Centers: Every US Site, Mapped (2026)

OpenAI's Stargate program was announced at the White House on January 21, 2025 as a plan to spend $500 billion over four years on US AI data centers through a new company, Stargate LLC, funded by OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle and MGX. The joint venture had hired no staff by February 2026, according to The Information, and OpenAI now describes Stargate as an umbrella term for its compute deals, which in practice means long leases with Oracle, SoftBank's SB Energy and the developers who build for them.

The headline numbers, as of November 15, 2026: seven US campuses carry the Stargate name (Abilene, Shackelford County and Milam County in Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; Lordstown, Ohio; Port Washington, Wisconsin; Saline Township, Michigan), and in 2026 OpenAI added two bigger campuses it anchors directly, 8 GW of IT capacity at PORTS-Pike in Ohio and the 3.2 GW Project Camellia in Georgia. Only one site is confirmed running: Oracle said on September 10, 2026 that six of Abilene's eight buildings, 618 MW, had been delivered. The rest are under construction or waiting on permits, with first power mostly in 2027 and 2028. For every other US project, see our master map of AI data centers under construction.

What Stargate is, and what it became

At the January 2025 launch, SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX were named as equity funders, with $100 billion to be deployed "immediately." SoftBank took financial responsibility, OpenAI operational responsibility, and Masayoshi Son became chairman; Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle and OpenAI were the technology partners. The Information reported that SoftBank and OpenAI would each own 40% of Stargate LLC.

On September 23, 2025, the partners named five more US sites, chosen from over 300 proposals in more than 30 states, and said Stargate stood at nearly 7 GW and over $400 billion of investment over three years, on track to secure the full $500 billion, 10 GW by the end of 2025.

That target was missed: in February 2026 The Information reported that the joint venture was not developing any data centers and that OpenAI had not locked in 10 GW through SoftBank and Oracle by the end of 2025 (The Decoder). In April the Financial Times reported that OpenAI had "in practice" abandoned the joint venture for bilateral deals (Tom's Hardware). In this post, a Stargate site is a campus announced under that name; the two 2026 campuses OpenAI anchors without it are flagged separately.

Why OpenAI is building at this scale

In November 2025 Sam Altman talked about roughly $1.4 trillion of compute commitments over eight years. In February 2026 OpenAI told investors it was targeting about $600 billion of compute spending by 2030 (CNBC), and in July the Wall Street Journal reported $750 billion of infrastructure spending through 2030. Since an October 2025 restructuring, Microsoft no longer has a right of first refusal on that compute, so OpenAI can sign with Oracle, AWS, CoreWeave and others without offering the work to Microsoft first.

OpenAI data center locations: the master map

Capacity is in each developer's own unit, and those differ (IT load, total power or utility supply). Investment is what the developer, county or press reported, and rarely includes chips.

Adding up the gigawatts and the dollars

There is no official tally against the $500 billion pledge. These are the stated figures, labelled:

• Announced, Stargate-branded: Epoch AI estimated the seven sites at over 9 GW of planned capacity (total facility power), mostly due by the end of 2028 (Epoch AI, April 2026).
• Announced, OpenAI-anchored in 2026: 8 GW of IT capacity at PORTS-Pike and 3.2 GW of utility supply in Georgia. With Epoch's estimate, that is roughly 20 GW on paper, a sum that mixes IT load and utility supply, so treat it as an order of magnitude.
• Operating, confirmed: 618 MW at Abilene as of September 10, 2026, about 6% of the original 10 GW goal. Epoch estimates Abilene's last two buildings were online by November 1 (about 824 MW of IT load); Oracle has not confirmed it.
• Dollars stated for four campuses: Abilene $15 billion (reported funding), Frontier $25 billion or more, Lighthouse $15 billion or more and The Barn $16 billion, a floor of about $71 billion for buildings and power before chips. Oracle co-CEO Clay Magouyrk put the equipment inside The Barn alone at another $30 to 40 billion.
• Ceilings, not spending: Doña Ana County's revenue bonds of up to $165 billion are a tax vehicle, and Nvidia's PORTS-Pike guarantees are capped at $105 billion.

Timeline: Stargate in 2025 and 2026

• January-August 2025: Stargate announced (January 21). Crusoe expands Abilene to 1.2 GW (March) and closes about $11.6 billion of financing (May). OpenAI and Oracle agree on up to 4.5 GW (July). SoftBank buys the Lordstown plant (August).
• September-December 2025: Doña Ana County approves Project Jupiter's bonds 4-1 (September 19). Five new sites named (September 23); Crusoe declares Abilene's first phase live (September 30). Port Washington (October 22) and Saline Township (October 30) announced. Michigan regulators approve DTE's power contracts and construction starts at Port Washington (December).
• January-April 2026: OpenAI and SoftBank put $1 billion into SB Energy (January 9). Lordstown adopts a moratorium (January). OpenAI and Oracle drop the Abilene expansion, which goes to Microsoft (March). Saline's financing is secured (April 24) and Jupiter switches to fuel cells (April 27).
• May-August 2026: Saline groundbreaking (June 1). Project Camellia announced (July 22). Texas orders an audit of new data center grid approvals (August 3). PORTS-Pike announced (August 17). Camellia's power contract approved (August 26).
• September-November 2026: Oracle reports 618 MW delivered at Abilene (September 10). New Mexico's Supreme Court lifts its pause on Jupiter's permits (reported September 18). Jupiter's air permit hearing set for December 7.

Site by site

Abilene, Texas (Stargate I)

Crusoe began building in June 2024 on Lancium land with a 1.2 GW grid connection approved by ERCOT. Its March 2025 expansion announcement describes eight buildings of about 4 million square feet, closed-loop liquid cooling that recirculates its water, and natural gas turbines for backup power. About $11.6 billion of financing closed in May 2025 through a Crusoe, Blue Owl and Primary Digital joint venture, with total funding reported at $15 billion; Oracle holds a reported 15-year lease. The Abilene City Council granted an 85% property tax abatement, Texas Standard reported.

On September 10, 2026, Oracle said six of the eight buildings (618 MW, 75% of the campus) had been delivered (earnings call summary); Epoch AI estimates the last two came online around November 1. In March, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI and Oracle had ended plans to expand the campus after disagreeing over financing and capacity forecasts, and OpenAI's Sachin Katti said the company put that capacity elsewhere. Crusoe then signed Microsoft for an adjacent 900 MW campus of two buildings with its own power plant, the first due in mid-2027 (AP). AP noted that Oracle has described the existing 350 MW gas plant at the Stargate campus as backup power, since its buildings draw mainly from the grid.

Shackelford County, Texas (Vantage Frontier)

Vantage's Frontier campus is ten buildings, 3.7 million square feet and 1.4 GW of IT capacity on about 1,200 acres, at more than $25 billion (Bisnow). It is designed to run off the grid on a gas microgrid built and operated by VoltaGrid, according to documents Business Insider obtained (Construction Owners). In July 2025 county commissioners unanimously backed a 10-year tax abatement under which Vantage pays $10 million a year in lieu of property taxes (Albany News). Vantage targeted its first building for the second half of 2026. Epoch's imagery showed five shells roofed by September 4, 2026; its estimate from state filings puts the first building in service around August 2027 and the full campus in late 2028.

Milam County, Texas (SB Energy)

On January 9, 2026, OpenAI and SoftBank each invested $500 million in SB Energy, which will build and operate the 1.2 GW campus near Burlington, and OpenAI signed a 1.2 GW lease (SB Energy). SB Energy plans new solar and battery generation for most of the power. The Information reported the deal settled a fight over control: SoftBank's unit owns the campus, OpenAI controls its design under a long lease. Steel framing was up on the first building by March 2026, and SB Energy said facilities would enter service from 2026; no building had been reported in service by mid-November.

Lordstown, Ohio (SoftBank)

SoftBank bought Foxconn's former GM plant for $375 million in August 2025 to make data center equipment there in a joint venture with Foxconn (Manufacturing Dive). The data center uses "a small part" of the site, per a SoftBank spokesperson, and was promised for 2026; Epoch's July 2026 imagery showed it mostly roofed but not operating. The village has since extended a moratorium on new data center applications to early January 2027, and on October 20 the Ohio Supreme Court let it stop reviewing a separate project, reported at $3.6 billion. That fight is in our data center moratorium tracker.

Doña Ana County, New Mexico (Project Jupiter)

Jupiter is the most contested site. STACK Infrastructure and BorderPlex Digital Assets are building four buildings on 1,400 acres in Santa Teresa for Oracle and OpenAI. On September 19, 2025 the county voted 4-1 to approve up to $165 billion in industrial revenue bonds: 30 years without property tax in exchange for $360 million in payments. In March 2026 a judge refused to dismiss residents' challenge to that approval.

The bigger fight is over power. In April 2026 the developers replaced a planned gas turbine microgrid with Bloom Energy fuel cells of up to 2.45 GW, still fueled by natural gas. The state Supreme Court paused the air and water permit cases in August, then rejected petitions from the Center for Biological Diversity and New Energy Economy and lifted the pause in September (Searchlight New Mexico). In October Oracle said a revised permit would cut permitted emissions by about 35%, and hearing officer James Browning kept a public hearing for December 7, 2026 (Albuquerque Journal). Construction continues; Epoch projects completion around the end of 2028.

Port Washington, Wisconsin (Vantage Lighthouse)

Lighthouse, announced October 22, 2025, is four buildings with "close to a gigawatt" of capacity on 500 of 672 acres north of Milwaukee, at more than $15 billion (Vantage). We Energies will serve it under a dedicated rate, and Vantage committed at least $175 million to local water, wastewater and power upgrades. Construction began with a groundbreaking in December 2025, when BizTimes put the campus's power use at 1.3 GW, with later phases potentially needing up to 3.5 GW. Oracle said in September 2026 that construction was on track while it worked with energy partners on power delivery, with completion due in 2028. In April 2026 Wisconsin regulators approved We Energies' tariff for very large customers with a 15-year minimum term and a threshold lowered from 500 MW to 100 MW (PSC).

Saline Township, Michigan (Related Digital "The Barn")

The Barn is three 550,000-square-foot buildings with more than 1 GW of capacity, announced October 30, 2025. The township board voted 4-1 against rezoning in September 2025; Related Digital and the landowners sued, and an October consent judgment let the project proceed. In December the Michigan Public Service Commission conditionally approved DTE Energy's 1.4 GW contracts without a contested case. Attorney General Dana Nessel and environmental groups appealed, citing heavy redactions, and filed briefs at the Court of Appeals in August 2026 (Planet Detroit). Financing was secured in April with Blackstone-affiliated funds and PIMCO anchoring the debt, at $16 billion, up from the $7 billion first cited (Michigan Public). At the June groundbreaking, Related's Jeff Blau said he expects delivery at the end of 2027 and suggested, without evidence, that some opposition might be paid.

PORTS-Pike, Ohio (SB Energy, backed by Nvidia)

The largest OpenAI site so far is not branded Stargate. On August 17, 2026, Nvidia said SB Energy would build, own and operate a campus at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Pike County and lease it to OpenAI for 20 years, for 8 GW of IT capacity (Nvidia). Nvidia is the exclusive compute supplier and backs the first 4.25 GW with credit support; it disclosed in an August 17 SEC filing that its payments under those residual-value guarantees are capped at $105 billion (Data Center Knowledge). SB Energy and SoftBank plan at least 10 GW of new generation and $4.2 billion of grid work with AEP Ohio. The campus sits partly on the Department of Energy's Portsmouth site, where the US government announced a 9.2 GW gas generation project in February 2026. Capacity comes in phases from 2028.

Effingham County, Georgia (Project Camellia)

OpenAI announced Camellia on July 22, 2026: four buildings on 1,400 acres near Savannah that OpenAI is developing itself, with no finance partner chosen yet. Georgia Power will supply 3.2 GW in phases from 2028 to 2032 under a 25-year deal, and OpenAI can be asked to cut up to 1 GW at peak times. The county values it at $20 billion, and its development authority approved a 50% property tax abatement for 15 years (GPB). Public Service Commission staff approved the power contract on August 26 with new safeguards, including Georgia Power's agreement not to recover lost revenue from residents and most businesses (The Current). A state regional review in September noted wetlands and a protected plant on the site, the coastal advocacy group One Hundred Miles questioned gaps in the filing, and county commissioners postponed the site plan at the developer's request while drafting stricter rules. For how these decisions compare nationally, see our record of data center approvals.

OpenAI's compute contracts beyond the Stargate sites

These are compute and chip contracts, not sites, and several overlap with the campuses above, so don't add them up. Microsoft, Amazon and Google's own campuses are in our Big Tech data center map.

Financing and stress signals

Developers now raise debt against leases signed by Oracle or OpenAI. In October 2025 Bloomberg reported that banks led by JPMorgan and MUFG were preparing a record $38 billion of loans for Vantage's Texas and Wisconsin campuses (Sherwood News). Blue Owl financed Abilene, and Blackstone-affiliated funds financed Michigan.

Oracle carries much of the load. In fiscal 2026 it raised $43 billion of debt and $5 billion of equity and reported negative free cash flow of $23.7 billion (Oracle filing); in September it guided to $90-95 billion of capital spending for fiscal 2027 and said most new contracts use customer prepayments or customer-supplied hardware. SoftBank took a $40 billion bridge loan in March 2026, mainly to fund a $30 billion follow-on investment in OpenAI, and SB Energy filed for a public listing in September.

Regulators also slowed things down: Texas paused new data center grid approvals pending an audit in August, and OpenAI pledged to comply with the governor's standards. Michigan's power contracts are under appeal and New Mexico's air permit is undecided. Apart from the Abilene expansion, no named Stargate site has been publicly cancelled.

The pattern: OpenAI rents, others carry the buildings

A developer (Crusoe, Vantage, Related, STACK or SB Energy) owns the land, shell and power; Oracle or SoftBank owns the chips at the Stargate sites, by Epoch AI's account; OpenAI signs a lease. Camellia is the exception, a site OpenAI is developing itself, and it still has no finance partner.

The approval fights track what each site needed from public bodies. Abilene and Frontier, which rely on a grid connection ERCOT had already approved or on their own gas generation, moved fastest. Sites that needed a rezoning (Saline), a regulated utility contract (Michigan, Georgia) or an air permit for private generation (New Mexico) drew lawsuits and appeals, and states answered with rules of their own, from the Texas audit to the safeguards in Camellia's power contract.

What this means for your AI visibility

Residents, county officials, reporters, investors and job seekers now research projects like these by asking ChatGPT, Google AI Mode or Perplexity: "Is the Saline Township data center approved?", "Who is building the data center in Santa Teresa?", "How much water will the Effingham site use?" The answer, and the sources it cites (a local paper, an opposition group, the developer's press release or a utility filing), shapes opinion before the next hearing. Stargate shows how fast that picture goes stale: an answer that still describes a $500 billion joint venture, or an Abilene expansion that was dropped in March 2026, is out of date.

For developers, utilities, economic development agencies and the companies behind these campuses, that is a reputation question they can measure. LLM Pulse tracks brand mentions, the sources and URLs AI answers cite, share of voice and sentiment across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews, with daily, weekly or monthly tracking; Claude, Copilot, Grok, Meta AI and other models are paid add-ons. Tracking prompts about your project shows which sources the models cite and whether their answers match the current permit record.

Summary

Stargate began as a $500 billion, 10 GW joint venture and by November 2026 works as an umbrella over leases at seven US campuses in Texas, New Mexico, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan. In 2026 OpenAI added an 8 GW campus at PORTS-Pike, Ohio, and the 3.2 GW Project Camellia in Georgia, and walked away from the Abilene expansion, which went to Microsoft. That is roughly 20 GW on paper against 618 MW confirmed in operation, with most of the rest due in 2027-2028 and several sites still facing permit hearings, appeals and state audits.