OpenAI commits to 'paying our own way' so that Stargate AI data centers don't increase energy bills — will fund grid upgrades and even flexible loads to reduce stress on energy supply
Following Trump's calls for AI tech companies to 'pay their own way', and in the footsteps of Microsoft, AI giant OpenAI has announced it will do exactly that as it continues in its quest for AGI through its massive Stargate buildout. In a press release, the company stated that every Stargate site will have a Stargate Community plan. Using Trump's own words, the company committed to 'paying our own way.'
Stargate confirmed that it is well on its way to its targeted 10GW U.S. AI infrastructure expansion by 2029, and says that it is "well beyond halfway" in terms of planned capacity. As sites come online in places like Texas, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Michigan, OpenAI said, "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."
The impact of AI data centers on local communities has become an increasingly hot-button issue with the explosion in AI buildouts. Reports of vast increases in energy prices, water shortages, and other issues have clouded progress made by big companies, with energy consumption and cost a particularly pressing concern.
To that end, OpenAI says every Stargate site "will have its own locally tailored Stargate Community plan," which will be driven "by community input and local concerns."
The headline commitment, as mentioned, is that OpenAI says "we commit to paying our own way on energy, so that our operations don’t increase your electricity prices." Measures proposed include bringing new dedicated power and storage funded by its projects, to increasing energy generation and transmission resources, again paid for by OpenAI. The company listed example approaches, including "Funding the incremental generation and grid upgrades our load requires," planning with local utilities companies, and developing "flexible loads" to reduce consumption of data centers during peak periods or forecasted grid stress.
The company further stated aims to minimize water use and protect local ecosystems, use innovations in cooling water designs "that drastically reduce the water use compared to traditional datacenters," and invest in local jobs.
Announced exactly a year ago, Stargate is a $500 billion OpenAI project funded by the likes of SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX. Tech partners include Arm, Microsoft, Oracle, and, of course, Nvidia. It is a large part of OpenAI's thrust towards AGI, artificial general intelligence, a hallowed benchmark generally best described as AI that is generally smarter than humans. Only time will tell whether OpenAI can stick by these Stargate commitments, but signals from Washington and Trump's rhetoric make it clear that this is an administration priority. Trump warned AI data center builders that Americans must not "pick up the tab" for their power consumption.
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To that end, OpenAI says every Stargate site "will have its own locally tailored Stargate Community plan," which will be driven "by community input and local concerns."
It's a page right out of the standard big industry playbook to setup some sort of community liaison/committee and even to have open meetings. However, merely committing to accept input and hear concerns doesn't mean they will actually do anything meaningfully different, in the end. It's good for optics, but remains to be seen what impact it'll have.
I also don't trust any supposed commitments to subsidizing infrastructure. Maybe they do this while the Eye of Sauron is upon them, but perhaps they start to relax this policy, as time goes on & political winds shift.
There's even the possibility that they end up just subsidizing the energy cost of the communities where their datacenters are located, but not everywhere that's affected by the cost of the capacity upgrades they require. The grid is a large network and can pull energy from a couple states away, where it could be harder to trace back to them.
