OpenAI said it will cover the costs of energy infrastructure for its Stargate data centers to prevent its operations from driving up local electricity bills. The company plans to work with host communities and pay for upgrades to local grids or secure its own energy supply, reports Shirin Ghaffary and Mark Chediak of Bloomberg. The commitment, similar to Microsoft’s, addresses growing concerns over rising energy costs as data centers expand to support the AI boom.
Stargate, a $500 billion initiative with partners including Oracle and SoftBank, has sites in Texas, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Michigan, with projects incorporating renewable energy and battery storage to protect consumers from price increases. They write:
OpenAI said it will pay for the costs of developing energy-related infrastructure required by its Stargate data centers to address concerns the facilities may drive up consumers’ utility bills.
The ChatGPT maker will work with communities where it’s developing the projects to ensure they don’t raise electricity costs. The company said in a blog post Tuesday that it will, for example, pay for additional infrastructure to support local energy grids or secure its own energy supply. OpenAI’s announcement follows a similar commitment from Microsoft Corp., although many of the details of both plans aren’t yet clear. […]
OpenAI’s Stargate initiative is a project announced a year ago to build $500 billion on infrastructure for AI workload involving the AI startup and partners including SoftBank Group Corp. and Oracle Corp. The project’s first site is a massive data center in Abilene, Texas, developed by Oracle and built alongside development partner Crusoe. Other sites in development are in Texas, as well as New Mexico, Wisconsin and Michigan. […]
At its Wisconsin site, OpenAI said it’s working with Oracle and Vantage Data Centers, in coordination with WEC Energy Group, to develop new energy generation and capacity, including solar and battery storage, with a dedicated rate designed to protect other customers from price increases. OpenAI also said that Microsoft’s previously announced community AI commitments will apply to the AI campuses it builds for OpenAI’s workload.
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