New Delhi: OpenAI has announced a major expansion of its AI infrastructure in the United States, teaming up with Oracle to develop an additional 4.5 gigawatts of data center capacity under its Stargate platform. The partnership, revealed on 22nd July, brings OpenAI’s total Stargate capacity under development to over 5 gigawatts, putting it on track to exceed its original investment pledge made at the White House earlier this year.
The new data centers, which will be built across different parts of the country, are expected to run more than 2 million chips and will create over 1 lakh jobs in the coming years. These roles will include construction workers, electricians, equipment operators, and full-time data center staff from over 20 states, according to OpenAI.
Oracle deal pushes Stargate plan past 5 GW mark
OpenAI said the Oracle collaboration adds 4.5 GW to its Stargate platform, which is its long-term plan to support massive AI compute needs. This is in addition to the existing Stargate I facility in Abilene, Texas, where Oracle has already started delivering Nvidia GB200 server racks.
OpenAI shared that early training and inference work is already happening at the Abilene site. The company said, “Stargate I site has already created thousands of jobs, with more expected as operations expand.”
The AI company stated that the expansion is part of its commitment to invest $500 billion into 10 GW of AI infrastructure within four years. With Oracle and SoftBank onboard, that number might go even higher.
What Stargate means for OpenAI’s future
Stargate is not just one facility. It is a full-fledged infrastructure platform involving partnerships with Oracle, SoftBank, CoreWeave, and other global players. Microsoft will also continue to provide cloud support as part of this effort.
According to OpenAI, Stargate is designed to handle the rising compute demand from frontier AI research, which includes training large language models and running advanced inference workloads. The growing demand has also pushed the company to rethink how data centers are designed and where they are located.
With SoftBank, OpenAI is moving ahead with land assessments for new data center sites and testing out new infrastructure layouts. These sites will also aim to be energy efficient and handle advanced AI workloads.
Job creation and economic impact
OpenAI said the newly announced data center projects will bring major economic activity across several U.S. states. Over 1 lakh new jobs are expected from this 4.5 GW expansion alone. These include short-term construction jobs and permanent operations roles. The company noted that the Abilene site already brought in workers from more than 20 states.
They added, “We estimate that building, developing and operating the additional 4.5 GW of data center capacity we’re announcing today will create over 100,000 jobs across construction and operations roles in the U.S.”