OpenAI’s Stargate project will cost $500 billion and will require enough energy to power a whole city

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OpenAI’s sprawling Stargate data center initiative carries a huge price tag and enormous energy needs.
The project, which spans five facilities, will require seven gigawatts of power and $400 billion of investment.
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OpenAI is embarking on a sprawling AI data center buildout known as Stargate, and the cost in both dollars and energy will be staggering.

According to an announcement from the ChatGPT maker at the end of September, it has zeroed in on five data center sites—in Shackelford County, Texas, Doña Ana County, New Mexico, Lordstown, Ohio, Milam County, Texas, and an unnamed Midwest site—in addition to its flagship facility in Abilene, Texas. All told, the projects will cost $400 billion and require seven gigawatts of power. To give an idea of how much energy that is, New York City requires about six gigawatts of power.

The data center buildout is among the most publicized aspects of the AI boom, mainly because of the huge costs associated with these facilities. OpenAI has inked deals worth $1 trillion just in 2025, and hyperscalers like Meta and Microsoft have steadily ramped up capex spending to meet the moment.

But the power requirements are also dizzying. Stargate will ultimately be even larger by gigawatts, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stating in last month’s announcement that the ultimate aim of the project is for 10 gigawatts of compute requiring $500 billion of investment.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how much power the global AI data center boom will ultimately require. According to research from RAND, global data center demand could reach 68 gigawatts by 2027 and 327 gigawatts by 2030.

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