OpenAI’s $100 billion Stargate project to house 400,000 Nvidia AI chips

Investing.com -- OpenAI’s ambitious $100 billion Stargate infrastructure project is set to become one of the largest known clusters of artificial intelligence (AI) computing power. The project will have space for up to 400,000 of Nvidia Corp . (NASDAQ:NVDA)’s AI chips in its first data center complex.

The data center complex is under construction in the small Texas city of Abilene. Crusoe, the developer of the project, has announced that the construction will be completed by mid-2026. The complex will have a capacity of 1.2 gigawatts of power.

The construction of the AI data center began in June 2024. The initial phase of the project includes two buildings with a combined area of 980,000 square feet and a power capacity of over 200 megawatts. The first phase is expected to be operational in the first half of 2025.

The data center has been designed by Crusoe at the Lancium Clean Campus to support powerful AI workloads. The design allows each building to operate up to 50,000 Nvidia GB200 NVL72s on a single integrated network fabric. This design is a significant advancement in data center design and scale for AI training and inference workloads.

The construction site currently employs about 2,000 people daily, and this number is expected to reach nearly 5,000 as a result of the expansion. The Development Corporation of Abilene (DCOA) has estimated that the economic impact of the initial phase of the project will be approximately $1 billion over 20 years. The expansion of the project has the potential to increase this impact considerably.

The data center complex is part of Crusoe’s mission to advance AI technology. The company aims to provide the infrastructure needed to manufacture intelligence at an unprecedented speed and scale. Crusoe’s CEO, Chase Lochmiller, has described the project as defining a new category for digital infrastructure, the AI factory.

The project also includes a commitment to sustainability. Lancium, the company providing end-to-end solutions for the project, has a power plan for the site that includes large-scale behind-the-meter battery storage and solar resources. These renewable energy sources will help ensure grid reliability, and economic and carbon optimization. The site will also leverage abundant proximate wind resources and incentivize new greenfield renewable power development.

The data center will feature natural gas turbines for its back-up power supply and a zero-water evaporation cooling system that continuously recirculates water through a closed-loop system.

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