Bloomberg reported on the 6th that OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, is pushing for the construction of additional data centers in Texas and more than 10 other states.
Previously, OpenAI announced on the 21st that it would establish a joint venture called "Stargate" in collaboration with Japanese investment corporations SoftBank and U.S. software corporation Oracle, investing over $500 billion in building artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
The first data center for Stargate is expected to be built on 875 acres (3.54㎢) in the small Texas city of Abilene, which is the size of New York's Central Park.
Bloomberg reported that site selection for additional data centers is underway in other areas of Texas besides Abilene, and that OpenAI is evaluating potential sites in 15 states, including this. Officials from OpenAI and SoftBank visited Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Oregon this week.
Chris Leheyn, OpenAI's vice president of the institutional sector, noted, "We are seeing tremendous interest in attracting the Stargate project nationwide," and "To speed up the site selection process, we began publicly receiving proposals last week."
OpenAI is also receiving bids from architectural and engineering corporations to design AI data centers.
Each data center project will consume around 1 gigawatt (GW) of power, similar to what a nuclear power plant produces. This amount is equivalent to the power used by 750,000 to 1 million households.
State governments expect that OpenAI's data centers will help establish their own AI hubs and provide new opportunities for startups, developers, and other related personnel.
OpenAI plans to review the proposals and announce the final site selection results in the first half of the year.