When Project Stargate was announced by the White House and OpenAI in January 2025, it was expected to invest $500 billion over the next four years to build data centers both in the US and around the world, including announcements of developments throughout 2025 in the UAE, Norway, the UK, Argentina, and South Korea. Less than a year later, the plans for these data centers are beginning to unravel.
A troubling pattern is emerging. In March this year, OpenAI and Oracle scrapped plans to expand the Stargate site in Abilene, TX, reportedly because OpenAI wanted to use only SOTA Rubin chips in the facilities. Earlier this month, OpenAI announced it was “pausing” development on the UK Stargate data center, and claimed “regulation and the cost of energy” were impediments to moving forward. Not long after, OpenAI reportedly changed its plans to develop a data center in Norway, handing the reins of the project to Microsoft and planning to rent compute from them instead of operating the data center itself.
What will happen to the remaining Argentina and UAE Stargate sites (the latter of which has been threatened by the Iranian military) remains to be seen, but as questions about OpenAI continue to mount, the evaporation of OpenAI’s data center projects is only adding fuel to the fire.
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