OpenAI

July 12, 2026

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North Carolina Repeals Its Power Tax Break. Texas Never Had One to Lose.

The Abilene Stargate campus, Crusoe Energy's 1,100-acre build inside the $500 billion OpenAI-SoftBank-Oracle venture, anchors the story: an expansion application now seeks 41 turbines and 18 generators.

July 10, 2026

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430 Opposition Groups in a Year. The Ones Who Engage Early Still Break Ground.

OpenAI and Oracle's scrapped 600 MW Abilene expansion in March 2026 shows even mega-scale deployments buckle when financing fails.

July 9, 2026

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89% of New Power Requests Are Datacenters. Abbott Wants Guardrails.

OpenAI's Stargate site in Abilene, developed by Crusoe, runs 10 gas turbines and 62 backup diesel generators today, with plans for 41 more turbines and 18 additional generators, pushing combined capacity past 1,000 MW.

July 8, 2026

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Ratepayers Come Off the Hook. Developers Underwrite the Wires Themselves.

In New Mexico, Food & Water Watch is pushing a 2027 moratorium, and Project Jupiter (Oracle and OpenAI) still drew opposition after pivoting to Bloom Energy fuel cells, with state filings showing emissions exceeding Albuquerque and Las Cruces combined.

July 5, 2026

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Self-Supply Is Now the Floor for Political Viability in Texas

Meanwhile SoftBank's SB Neo is building OpenAI's 1.2 GW facility in Milam County, a major queue footprint within a broader 10 GW pipeline.

June 30, 2026

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Home-Rule Authority Faces Its First Real Test in San Marcos

Google's FERC filing proposes long-term service agreements, upfront collateral, and withdrawal penalties to sort serious projects from option-shopping; Amazon, Microsoft, and OpenAI back variations.

June 29, 2026

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Washington Set the Deadline. Texas Already Wrote the Playbook.

Amazon, Microsoft, and OpenAI back similar models, and NRG proposes competitive "open seasons" that force developers to commit or forfeit priority.

June 26, 2026

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Five Tests Now Separate Real Load From Speculation in Texas

OpenAI's Stargate Abilene (1.2 GW, Crusoe and Lancium gas) and Shackelford County (2 GW, onsite microgrid) stay on schedule for the same reason: they secured primary power without waiting for a slot.

June 24, 2026

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Reeves County Banks 6,000 Jobs as the Behind-the-Meter Model Scales

Michigan's data center buildout became a 2026 election flashpoint after Gov. Whitmer's groundbreaking for the 1.4 GW Oracle/OpenAI Saline Township facility drew sharp backlash, while northern Michigan townships pass moratoriums, partly because transmission upgrades don't extend north of Ludington.

June 22, 2026

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ERCOT Studies Big Loads in Batches Now. The Queue Math Just Changed.

xAI runs turbines at Colossus, OpenAI's Stargate in West Texas targets over 1GW, and Meta keeps cutting generation deals with Williams.

June 19, 2026

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Site Control Now Beats a Press Release in ERCOT's Queue

Amazon pledged to cover 100% of grid connection costs and make no rate claims against Ameren customers, tracing to the March 4 Ratepayer Protection Pledge it signed alongside Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI.

June 18, 2026

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225 Interconnection Requests, One Filter: ERCOT Sorts Real From Paper

OpenAI's Stargate site in Abilene tells the harder half of the story: Crusoe won a 360 MW gas permit in six days, then ordered 29 GE Vernova aeroderivative turbines toward 1 GW, choosing jet-engine units because combined-cycle turbines now carry seven-year lead times.

June 17, 2026

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Sid Miller Backs a Moratorium. Abbott Rewrites the Rules Instead.

Transparency metrics are coming nationally too: WUE disclosure is moving fast, with OpenAI facilities cited at more than a million gallons per day.

June 16, 2026

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Developers Foot 100% of the Wire. Ratepayers Get the Discount.

Oracle and OpenAI's $165 billion Project Jupiter in Doña Ana County pivoted from water-intensive gas turbines to fuel cells and committed to 11 million gallons annually of recycled non-potable water, roughly 30,000 gallons per day.

June 11, 2026

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Abbott Names July 17. The 2027 Rulebook Starts Getting Written Now.

Oracle and OpenAI are building off-grid gas for Stargate Jupiter in New Mexico.

June 10, 2026

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418 GW Knock on Texas Doors. Behind-the-Meter Builders Skip the Line.

Oracle's Project Jupiter locked 2.45 GW of Bloom fuel cells for OpenAI.

June 3, 2026

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Sequencing Beats Ambition: Power, Water, and Politics Each Bind Separately

The industry response is fracturing. Microsoft, OpenAI, and Oracle pledged to abandon evaporative cooling entirely, trading water risk for higher pump-power loads.

May 22, 2026

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Dallas Wins #1 Globally as Corpus Christi Shows the Real Constraint

President Trump's pledge from Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI commits the same companies to dedicated rate agreements and self-funded infrastructure, a faster permitting path tied to upfront cost-sharing.

May 9, 2026

OpenAI's Sam Altman and North America's Building Trades Unions president Sean McGarvey

May 6, 2026

Saline Township, Michigan rejected a 21-million-square-foot OpenAI-Oracle Stargate project in September; the developer sued, the township settled, and construction began by November.

May 5, 2026

The March 4 Ratepayer Protection Pledge from Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI committed signatories to fund their own generation and full grid upgrade costs, and the March 20 National Policy Framework reinforced that cost-internalization is now the price of permitting acceleration.

May 4, 2026

OpenAI's Abilene site is the Texas template at 0.9 GW, with executives describing 20+ GW near term.

May 2, 2026

Stack Fort Bliss next to Meta's $10 billion El Paso facility and the $165 billion Oracle/OpenAI Project Jupiter campus in Santa Teresa, and the Borderland is suddenly competing for water and firm megawatts at a scale the region's utilities haven't sized for.

May 1, 2026

The scale eclipses El Paso Electric's entire 2.9 GW system and lands alongside Meta's $10 billion Northeast El Paso build and the Oracle/OpenAI $165 billion Project Jupiter campus across the New Mexico line.

April 24, 2026

Oracle, OpenAI, and now Microsoft are building behind-the-meter gas generation in Abilene, with Crusoe's new 900 MW plant joining the existing 350 MW on what's becoming a 10-building, 2.1 GW campus.

April 23, 2026

Eleven US campuses serving OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and xAI now hold air permits for gas generation capable of emitting 129+ million tons of CO2e annually.

April 16, 2026

On April 7, the IRGC released video footage explicitly threatening OpenAI's $30 billion Stargate UAE project.

April 13, 2026

Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Coreweave are all redirecting capital inland, drawn by ERCOT's deregulated market structure, below-average electricity costs, and faster commercial contracting.

April 12, 2026

OpenAI's freeze on its UK Stargate project over power costs and regulatory burden reinforces that jurisdictions solving energy access fastest will capture disproportionate capital.

April 6, 2026

The White House's March 4 Ratepayer Protection Pledge, signed by Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, and Amazon, commits signatories to secure their own power and pay for utility infrastructure, but carries no enforcement mechanism.

April 1, 2026

American Mission, funded by OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, spent $372,000 backing Chris Gober in the 10th District.

March 30, 2026

Simultaneously, Microsoft is building two new AI buildings and a 900-megawatt power plant in Abilene after OpenAI backed away from further expansion there, consolidating Texas's position as the epicenter of American AI infrastructure.

March 29, 2026

Microsoft is absorbing OpenAI's abandoned expansion in Abilene, Texas, adding two new AI factory buildings and a 900-megawatt gas-fired power plant to what's becoming a 2.1-gigawatt computing complex.

March 27, 2026

The White House Ratepayer Protection Pledge, signed March 4 by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI, formalizes what Texas already started with Senate Bill 6: hyperscalers fund their own generation and transmission upgrades.

March 26, 2026

In Abilene, Microsoft leased Crusoe Energy's 700 MW campus after Oracle and OpenAI abandoned negotiations, positioning Microsoft alongside the Stargate flagship development.

March 21, 2026

SB Energy is already executing the power build for OpenAI's 1.2 GW Stargate campus in Milam County and holds a Google PPA in the state, meaning this Ohio megaproject competes directly for the same gas turbines, transformers, and EPC contractors Texas developers need.

March 15, 2026

A new academic study from UC Riverside, Caltech, and RIT documents that local water supply is a non-negotiable bottleneck for AI infrastructure siting, with OpenAI's scrapped Stargate expansion in Abilene, Texas cited as Exhibit A.

March 14, 2026

Senate Democrats launched a formal probe Friday into Meta, OpenAI, xAI, and five other companies over their rush to gas-fired datacenter power.

March 9, 2026

OpenAI and Oracle have capped the Stargate datacenter in Abilene, Texas at **1.2 GW**, abandoning plans to expand to 2.0 GW after power grid delays exceeded one year and winter weather knocked liquid cooling systems offline for days.

March 8, 2026

The White House's Ratepayer Protection Pledge, signed by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI, is the week's marquee policy development, but the concrete deal structures emerging around it matter most.

March 7, 2026

Oracle and OpenAI have killed expansion plans for their flagship Stargate campus in Abilene, Texas, capping the site at its original 1.2 GW footprint and abandoning the planned 2 GW second phase.

March 6, 2026

The White House's Ratepayer Protection Pledge, signed by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI, dominates today's news cycle, but the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas quietly dropped the more consequential analysis: data center power demand will double from 40 GW to 80 GW by 2031, pushing annual PCE inflation up 0.04 to 0.13 percentage points by 2030, with the effect nearly doubling if renewable deployment lags.

March 5, 2026

Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, AWS, Oracle, and xAI signed the Trump administration's voluntary "Ratepayer Protection Pledge," committing to fund their own power infrastructure rather than drawing from the grid.

March 3, 2026

The bills are unlikely to advance, but they reflect real pressure: Oracle and OpenAI's $7 billion Saline Township project has already drawn opposition from Michigan AG Dana Nessel, a township rezoning denial, and a developer lawsuit.

March 1, 2026

BIC Magazine reports Texas is commanding nearly $90 billion in annual datacenter and advanced manufacturing construction, anchored by OpenAI's $100 billion Stargate project in Abilene and "Data City" near Laredo.

February 23, 2026

Meta's El Paso behind-the-meter approach and Oracle/OpenAI's Stargate facility in Abilene fit the same pattern: operators are building their own power because they can't wait for grid interconnection.

February 21, 2026

Meta, OpenAI, Oracle, Chevron, and xAI are all pursuing variants of this model in at least nine states.

February 20, 2026

SB Energy already operates a 5-GW-plus portfolio including the 900-MW Orion Solar Belt serving Google's Midlothian datacenter in Milam County, and in January 2026 signed a 1.2-GW datacenter lease with OpenAI as part of the Stargate initiative.

February 18, 2026

Crusoe Energy Systems, developer of the 1.2 GW Stargate campus in Abilene backed by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle, has filed arguments that a new ERCOT approval requirement for private power agreements could impose 180-day delays on developers with billions already committed.