OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank expand Stargate with five new US data centre sites

OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank announced five additional US sites for the Stargate data-centre project, the joint venture unveiled at the White House in January 2025 with a pledge of $500 billion in AI infrastructure spending over four years. Three of the new sites — in Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; and a further Midwest location — were Oracle-led, together capable of delivering over 5.5 gigawatts of capacity; two more, in Lordstown, Ohio, and Milam County, Texas, were led by SoftBank and expected to scale to 1.5 gigawatts within 18 months.

Combined with the flagship Abilene, Texas site, already under construction, and capacity under development with CoreWeave, OpenAI said the expansion brought Stargate’s planned capacity to nearly 7 gigawatts and committed investment to over $400 billion for the following three years. The company framed the announcement as putting it on track to reach the full $500 billion, 10-gigawatt commitment made in January well before the original schedule.

The announcement coincided with the public opening of the Abilene site, which OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank staged as a visible marker of progress against continuing scepticism — voiced from the project’s launch — about whether the pledged capital and power supply actually existed rather than being aspirational. Electricity procurement remained the binding constraint on the timeline the companies described: securing gigawatt-scale power for each site, rather than construction or chip supply, was the step determining how fast the newly announced capacity could actually come online.