Where are OpenAI's data centers located?

OpenAI's US Stargate programme names seven sites: Abilene, Shackelford County and Milam County in Texas, Doña Ana County in New Mexico, Port Washington in Wisconsin, Saline Township in Michigan and Lordstown in Ohio. Outside the US, announced projects are in Abu Dhabi (UAE), Norway, the UK, India and Argentina. Separately, OpenAI has contracted power for an Effingham County, Georgia campus and a lease for the PORTS-Pike campus in Ohio.

Which Stargate site is operating today?

Abilene, Texas, built by Crusoe for Oracle and OpenAI. Epoch AI's April 2026 tracking put current capacity at about 0.3 GW with 4 of 8 buildings operational, against 1.2 GW projected for Q4 2026. The other six US sites had no operating capacity in that survey.

Does OpenAI own its data centers?

Mostly not. Sites are developed and owned by partners — Crusoe, Vantage, STACK Infrastructure, SB Energy, Related Digital — and leased to or operated for Oracle and OpenAI. The pattern is a single-tenant build-to-suit lease with the tenant supplying or financing the compute.

How much power will Stargate need?

Epoch AI sums the seven US sites to over 9 GW of projected capacity. Individual figures differ by source: Project Jupiter is 2.2 GW in Epoch's table but 2.45 GW in Oracle and Stack reporting, and Michigan is 1.4 GW at Epoch versus the 1 GW OpenAI announced in 2025. Always check whether a number is IT load, grid draw or generation.

Why are so many Stargate sites powered by on-site gas?

Grid interconnection takes years in most US markets, so developers use on-site natural-gas microgrids or fuel cells at Abilene, Shackelford and Doña Ana. The risk is dependency on fuel supply: Oracle sent a force majeure notice on Project Jupiter on 24 September 2026 because a gas pipeline slipped to 2027.

Can I rent space in a Stargate data center?

No. These are single-tenant campuses leased to OpenAI through Oracle or SoftBank entities. Enterprises that want AI capacity can lease from colocation providers or GPU clouds instead; the catalog and GPU tracker list what is published.

What is the international Stargate footprint?

Stargate UAE targets 200 MW initially and 1 GW in total in Abu Dhabi. Stargate Norway, built by Nscale and Aker, targets 230 MW with a possible 290 MW expansion. A UK deployment by Nscale is smaller, and India (at least 1 GW) and Argentina (500 MW, first 100 MW phase in 2027) were at the reported-plan or letter-of-intent stage.

Where Are OpenAI's Data Centers? Stargate Sites Tracked

OpenAI's Stargate has seven US sites and three-plus abroad. Abilene, Texas is the only one with meaningful live capacity; most others target Q4 2028.

By Artem Bukhkalov — Founder & CEO, The Dream View Co., Ltd. — publisher of Coloprice

OpenAI’s data centers are mostly not OpenAI’s: its Stargate programme is a set of single-tenant campuses built by partners and leased through Oracle and SoftBank. Seven US sites are named, across Texas, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, and only Abilene, Texas has meaningful live capacity. The rest are under construction with targets clustered around Q4 2028.

Key takeaways

Epoch AI’s April 2026 survey counts seven US Stargate sites totalling over 9 GW of projected capacity; only Abilene operates, at about 0.3 GW with 4 of 8 buildings live.
Five sites target Q4 2028: Shackelford (2.0 GW), Doña Ana (2.2 GW), Milam (1.2 GW), Port Washington (1.3 GW) and Saline Township (1.4 GW), per Epoch’s table.
Developers are third parties: Crusoe, Vantage (two sites), STACK, SB Energy, Related Digital.
Three of the sites rely on on-site gas generation to avoid grid queues; a gas-pipeline slip pushed Oracle to a force majeure notice at Project Jupiter on 24 September 2026.
Outside Stargate’s named seven, OpenAI is tied to a 3.2 GW power contract in Georgia and an up-to-8 GW lease in Ohio.
Internationally, UAE (200 MW first phase) and Norway (230 MW) are the most defined; Argentina and India are earlier-stage.

What “Stargate” actually is

Stargate is the umbrella name for OpenAI’s compute build-out with Oracle, SoftBank and site developers. The data centers themselves are owned and operated by others. The mechanics matter for anyone reading capacity headlines: the tenant signs a long lease (Oracle’s Abilene lease is reported at 15 years), a developer finances and builds the shell and power, and the GPU hardware is owned either by Oracle or, at the SoftBank sites, by SoftBank.

This is the build-to-suit hyperscale pattern described in our hyperscale sector page and powered shell vs turnkey guide, scaled to gigawatt campuses.

The seven US sites

Figures below are Epoch AI’s April 2026 per-site survey unless stated. Capacity is the projected figure as that source reports it, and definitions (IT vs grid) vary by site.

Site	Developer	Projected capacity	Status (Epoch, Apr 2026)	Target	Power
Abilene, TX	Crusoe	1.2 GW (0.3 GW live)	4 of 8 buildings operational	Q4 2026	On-site gas + grid
Shackelford County, TX	Vantage	2.0 GW	Roofing on first building	Q4 2028	On-site gas microgrid
Doña Ana County, NM	STACK	2.2 GW	Foundation work	Q4 2028	Two gas microgrids
Milam County, TX	SB Energy	1.2 GW	Steel framing, first building	Q4 2028	New generation + storage
Port Washington, WI	Vantage	1.3 GW	Foundation work	Q4 2028	Grid, reported 70% renewable and storage
Saline Township, MI	Related Digital	1.4 GW	Foundation, first building	Q4 2028	Grid (DTE) + battery storage
Lordstown, OH	SoftBank / Foxconn	below 0.3 GW	Land cleared	Unknown	Grid

Abilene, Texas

The flagship. Data Center Dynamics reported the Crusoe campus live on 30 September 2025 with the first two buildings serving Oracle and OpenAI. Epoch’s count of four of eight buildings and 0.3 GW is the latest independent figure we found; the 1.2 GW target is for Q4 2026. Epoch also notes that a planned 2.1 GW expansion was reversed and that Microsoft is partnering on an adjacent 900 MW facility.

Shackelford County and Milam County, Texas

Shackelford is a 1,200-acre, ten-building Vantage campus with a first building expected in late 2026. Milam County is a SoftBank-linked SB Energy “fast-build” site about 70 miles northeast of Austin, with its first building targeted for October 2026. Both Texas projects sit inside the ERCOT region, where large-load interconnection is the binding constraint; see also our note on Texas permit halts.

Doña Ana County, New Mexico (Project Jupiter)

STACK Infrastructure builds the campus for Oracle. Epoch lists 2.2 GW; reporting on Oracle’s notice cites 2.45 GW. The dependency is power: Bloom Energy fuel cells fed by a roughly 17-mile pipeline whose in-service date slipped to February 2027. Details are in our Project Jupiter force majeure note.

Port Washington, Wisconsin and Saline Township, Michigan

Both are grid-connected. Vantage’s Port Washington campus (“Lighthouse”) reports a 70% renewable-and-storage supply. Related Digital’s Michigan campus was announced in October 2025 at 1 GW and about $7 billion; Epoch now lists 1.4 GW and notes local opposition. The gap between 1.0 and 1.4 GW is a good example of why the basis of a capacity figure should be checked.

Lordstown, Ohio

Principally an AI server manufacturing site (SoftBank and Foxconn), with under 0.3 GW of potential data center load and no major construction visible in Epoch’s survey.

Beyond the named seven

Two large OpenAI-linked projects sit outside the Stargate seven but belong in any location map:

Project	Figure	Detail
Effingham County, GA	up to 3,200 MW	Georgia PSC approved a 25-year power contract on 26 August 2026; OpenAI covers infrastructure cost. See our report.
PORTS-Pike, Pike County, OH	4.25 GW initial, up to 8 GW	SB Energy builds under a 20-year lease to OpenAI, with Nvidia investing $1.5 billion in SB Energy. See our report.

International Stargate sites

Country	Partners	Reported capacity	Stage
UAE (Abu Dhabi)	Oracle, Cisco, Nvidia, SoftBank	200 MW first phase, 1 GW total	Slated to start operations in 2026
Norway	Nscale, Aker	230 MW, possible +290 MW	Target of 100,000 Nvidia GPUs by end-2026
UK	Nscale	About 8,000 GPUs, possibly multi-site	Smaller deployment
India	Not confirmed	At least 1 GW	Reported plan
Argentina	Letter of intent	500 MW	First 100 MW phase 2027

How to read the numbers

Three cautions apply to every Stargate figure:

Capacity basis. Epoch converts to H100-equivalents (for example 1.2 GW is about one million), while developers quote IT MW and utilities quote grid MW. These are not interchangeable.
Announced vs energised. Epoch’s own conclusion is that sites which have broken ground will not deliver significant new capacity before late 2026, with most arriving in 2027–2028.
Source age. Epoch’s table is dated April 2026; the Stargate Tracker reported status as of 18 September 2026 but is a secondary aggregator. Treat statuses as snapshots.

For context on how this compares with commercial colocation, see the data center catalog and our pipeline statistics; gigawatt single-tenant campuses sit outside the retail and wholesale pricing in the Colocation Price Index.

What it means for capacity buyers

Competition for power, not space. Gas turbines, fuel cells and transformers are being absorbed by these campuses; enterprise buyers face longer lead times in Texas and the Midwest. See data center power density for how AI loads change requirements.
Local risk is rising. Michigan opposition, Lordstown’s ban on future data centers and the Jupiter pipeline show that permitting and fuel supply, not construction, set timelines.
Rent is not cheaper at scale. Single-tenant leases are bespoke and unpublished; no public per-kW price exists for these sites.

What to do

If you need AI capacity within 12 months, do not wait for Stargate-adjacent supply; request quotes from operators with energised capacity via the quote form.
Check any gigawatt claim for its basis (IT, grid or generation) and its energisation date before using it in a plan.
Track the first-building dates (Shackelford, Milam: late 2026) as the next real test of the 2028 targets.
For GPU access rather than space, compare published rental prices in the GPU tracker and see neocloud vs hyperscaler.