OpenAI stalls UK Stargate, Texas build proceeds
Reporting says OpenAI paused its UK Stargate data‑centre effort, blaming high energy costs and a tough regulatory environment, while separate coverage describes an accelerating Stargate build-out in Texas. The two pieces together portray AI supply as sensitive to local energy, land and regulatory constraints. (alltoc.com) (iberoeconomia.es)
OpenAI has paused work on a United Kingdom Stargate data-center push while its flagship Stargate campus in Texas keeps expanding. (telegraph.co.uk) (openai.com) The Telegraph reported on April 9 that OpenAI put plans for a United Kingdom arm of Stargate on hold, citing Britain’s high power prices and waiting for conditions to improve. The Financial Times separately reported regulatory uncertainty was also part of the delay. (telegraph.co.uk) (ft.com) Stargate is OpenAI’s large computing build-out with SoftBank, Oracle and MGX, announced in January 2025 as a plan to invest $500 billion in artificial-intelligence infrastructure. OpenAI said SoftBank has financial responsibility and OpenAI has operational responsibility. (openai.com) In practice, that means building giant data centers packed with graphics processing units, the chips used to train and run artificial-intelligence models. Those sites need huge amounts of electricity, land, cooling equipment and grid connections before a single model can be trained. (ft.com) (oracle.com) Texas has moved faster. Crusoe said on September 30, 2025 that the first phase of the Abilene, Texas, campus was live on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and OpenAI said on September 23, 2025 that Abilene was already running and that Stargate had nearly 7 gigawatts of planned capacity. (crusoe.ai) (openai.com) Crusoe had already said on March 18, 2025 that it started a second construction phase in Abilene, adding six buildings and taking the campus to 1.2 gigawatts, with completion expected in mid-2026. OpenAI later said an additional 600 megawatts was being considered near the same flagship site. (crusoe.ai) (openai.com) OpenAI and Oracle said in July 2025 that a separate partnership added 4.5 gigawatts of Stargate capacity under development, bringing the total with Abilene to more than 5 gigawatts and more than 2 million chips. CNBC said the company framed that update as evidence the project was moving ahead after questions about delays. (openai.com) (cnbc.com) The contrast leaves Britain outside a project OpenAI had discussed as part of a wider international expansion. The company has moved ahead elsewhere, including a May 2025 Stargate United Arab Emirates announcement for a 1-gigawatt campus in Abu Dhabi with 200 megawatts expected to go live in 2026. (telegraph.co.uk) (openai.com) For now, Stargate looks less like a single global rollout than a site-by-site contest over power, permits and construction speed. In April 2026, Texas is building and the United Kingdom is waiting. (telegraph.co.uk) (openai.com)
