Short answer: Stargate Abilene is the first flagship campus in OpenAI’s larger Stargate AI-infrastructure program. It is already running some OpenAI training and inference workloads on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure using NVIDIA GB200 systems, but the planned eight-building, approximately 1.2-gigawatt campus is not finished. The most accurate description as of August 11, 2026, is partially operational and still expanding.
The site is also known by several names: Stargate 1, the Abilene Stargate campus, and the Crusoe/Lancium Clean Campus project. Those labels refer to the same flagship development in Abilene, Texas, although different companies are responsible for different parts of it.
Stargate Abilene at a glance
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Where is it? | At Lancium’s Clean Campus in Abilene, West Texas |
| What is it? | The first major campus associated with OpenAI’s Stargate infrastructure program |
| Who is building it? | Crusoe, on infrastructure associated with Lancium’s Clean Campus |
| Who provides the cloud layer? | Oracle Cloud Infrastructure |
| Who uses the compute? | OpenAI, primarily for training and inference |
| What hardware is publicly confirmed? | NVIDIA GB200 systems from the Blackwell generation |
| How large is the planned site? | Eight buildings and an approximately 1.2-gigawatt ERCOT-approved interconnection |
| Is the entire campus operating? | No. The first phase is operating while construction and commissioning continue |
| How is it cooled? | Closed-loop cooling, with both liquid- and air-cooling support |
One important distinction runs through nearly every public claim about the project: planned capacity, installed equipment, live IT load, and completed construction are not the same thing.
A short timeline
- June 2024: Crusoe says construction began.
- January 21, 2025: OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX announce Stargate as a proposed U.S. AI-infrastructure program.
- June 2025: Crusoe says the first two buildings were energized within a year of construction beginning, and Oracle delivered the first NVIDIA GB200 racks.
- September 30, 2025: Crusoe announces that the first phase is running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and has begun early training and inference workloads.
- January 2026: OpenAI says the Abilene site is training and serving frontier AI systems while additional Stargate locations are being developed.
- April 29, 2026: OpenAI describes Abilene as an operating Stargate site using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and NVIDIA GB200 systems.
- August 11, 2026: The first phase is operational, but the broader eight-building campus remains under construction or commissioning.
1. Abilene is one campus in a much larger Stargate program
Stargate is not the name of one data-center building. OpenAI and its partners announced it in January 2025 as a proposed $500 billion, four-year U.S. AI-infrastructure buildout, with an initial $100 billion intended for immediate deployment.
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The original announcement identified SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX as the initial equity funders. SoftBank was assigned financial responsibility for the venture, while OpenAI was assigned operational responsibility. The announcement also named Microsoft as a key technology partner and said Microsoft would continue providing cloud services to OpenAI.
Abilene matters because it is the program’s first major campus and its reference project. OpenAI’s January 2026 community update said the site was already training and serving frontier AI systems, while additional Stargate locations were being developed in Texas, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
The $500 billion figure should not be read as money already spent on the Abilene site. It is a program-level ambition covering a wider infrastructure buildout, not the construction budget for one Texas campus.
2. The campus is in Abilene at Lancium’s Clean Campus
The project is located in Abilene, Texas, in West Texas, on land associated with Lancium’s Clean Campus. Lancium identifies the site as its flagship Stargate 1 campus and says the location has a fully approved 1.2-gigawatt ERCOT interconnection.
That interconnection is a power-access approval, not a statement that 1.2 gigawatts of computing equipment is already installed and running. It establishes the electrical scale the completed campus is designed to support.
Public naming can be confusing:
- Stargate 1: the label used for the flagship Stargate campus.
- Stargate Abilene: the location-based name commonly used for the project.
- Crusoe/Lancium Clean Campus: a description emphasizing the developer and the broader campus and power setting.
These names should not be mistaken for three separate Texas data centers.
3. OpenAI is the principal user, but it is not the only company involved
Calling the facility OpenAI’s data center is convenient shorthand, but it can imply a simple ownership structure that the public record does not establish. The project has several distinct layers of responsibility.
| Organization | Publicly described role |
|---|---|
| OpenAI | Principal user of the compute; responsible for operations within the Stargate structure and the training and inference workloads |
| Crusoe | Developer and infrastructure builder of the purpose-built AI data center |
| Lancium | Provider of the broader Clean Campus setting and associated power and interconnection infrastructure |
| Oracle | Provider and operator of the relevant Oracle Cloud Infrastructure layer; delivered the GB200 systems into the campus |
| NVIDIA | Supplier of the AI computing systems and networking technology |
| Microsoft | Key technology partner that continues to provide cloud services to OpenAI |
| SoftBank and MGX | Initial financial and equity partners in the wider Stargate program, alongside OpenAI and Oracle |
A careful description is therefore: OpenAI’s flagship Stargate campus in Abilene, developed by Crusoe and operated for OpenAI on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. That wording recognizes OpenAI’s central role without claiming that OpenAI owns every physical asset at the site.
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4. The headline scale is about 1.2 gigawatts—but that is not the live compute figure
Lancium says the campus has a 1.2-gigawatt ERCOT-approved interconnection, reviewed through ERCOT’s formal process and transmission-service-provider review. Crusoe describes an eight-building campus capable of supporting hundreds of thousands of GPUs on one integrated network fabric.
Those are planned or approved scale figures. They do not prove that the entire campus is built, energized, or populated with equipment today.
Third-party infrastructure trackers can provide more granular estimates. Epoch AI estimated approximately 509,000 H100-equivalents and 421 megawatts of IT power as of late July 2026, with higher figures projected later in 2026. An H100-equivalent is a normalized comparison used to estimate computing capacity; it does not necessarily mean the campus contains exactly that number of physical H100 cards. The estimate also relies partly on satellite imagery, modeling, regulatory filings, and company disclosures.
The practical takeaway is:
The campus is planned around roughly 1.2 gigawatts of power capacity, while the live portion is smaller and the exact current compute inventory remains an estimate.
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It would be inaccurate to present 1.2 gigawatts as the current operating load or to turn a third-party estimate into an official GPU count.
5. NVIDIA Blackwell systems are central to the first operational phase
Oracle began delivering NVIDIA GB200 racks to Abilene in June 2025, according to disclosures from both OpenAI and Crusoe. OpenAI’s April 2026 description again identified NVIDIA GB200 systems at the operating site.
GB200 systems belong to NVIDIA’s Blackwell generation, placing the first operational phase among the newer generation of high-density AI infrastructure rather than an H100-only deployment. These systems are designed for demanding model training and inference, where many accelerators must exchange data rapidly across a tightly integrated cluster.
There is an important limitation to the public hardware disclosures: a GB200 rack is not a GPU count. The number of racks, the configuration of each rack, the proportion installed versus reserved, and the equipment assigned to different workloads can change as the campus expands. The public record confirms the GB200 hardware family, but not one authoritative, continuously updated inventory number.
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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Crusoe’s description of hundreds of thousands of GPUs on one integrated network fabric also points to the engineering challenge. This is not simply a warehouse filled with independent servers. Training large models requires high-bandwidth connections between accelerators, carefully managed power delivery, thermal systems, storage, and software that can keep the cluster working as one service.
6. The buildings are designed for high-density AI hardware and closed-loop cooling
AI accelerators consume substantial power in a concentrated space, producing more heat per rack than conventional enterprise servers. Crusoe says the Abilene buildings are optimized for high-energy-density AI hardware and can support both liquid and air cooling.
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OpenAI says the site uses closed-loop cooling rather than traditional evaporative cooling towers. In the company’s description, coolant circulates through sealed pipes after the initial fill instead of being continuously consumed as part of the cooling process.
OpenAI estimates that the initial fill for each building is roughly equivalent to two Olympic-sized swimming pools. It also estimates that annual cooling-system water use at full buildout would be comparable to that of a medium-sized office building, or approximately four average households.
Those are company-provided estimates, not independently verified operating results. Actual water use can depend on weather, load, maintenance, operating conditions, and how the final campus is built out. Closed-loop cooling can reduce ongoing water consumption, but it does not mean the facility uses no water at all.
7. The power connection is as important as the computing equipment
A campus designed at gigawatt scale needs more than server buildings. It requires a large grid interconnection, substations, transmission planning, switchgear, backup systems, and a power strategy capable of supporting equipment that may operate continuously.
Lancium says Abilene’s 1.2-gigawatt interconnection was approved through ERCOT’s formal process and transmission-service-provider review. In simple terms, the project has secured an electrical pathway sized for its planned development. That does not mean the facility is currently drawing 1.2 gigawatts, nor does it reveal the exact amount of power being used by the live phase.
The project’s generation strategy has also received public attention. Associated reporting quoted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman saying that the site was burning gas during an earlier visit, while describing a longer-term objective of using a broader mix of energy sources.
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That statement should be treated as context, not as a complete current generation profile. The available public record does not support describing the campus as powered exclusively by renewable energy or exclusively by natural gas. The exact current mix, the role of on-site or nearby generation, and how the mix may change as the campus expands remain important questions.
8. “Operational” means the first phase is live—not that the campus is finished
Crusoe announced on September 30, 2025 that the first phase was up and running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and had begun early training and inference workloads. OpenAI separately reported that Oracle had begun delivering NVIDIA GB200 racks and that early training and inference were underway.
OpenAI’s April 29, 2026 infrastructure article described Abilene as an operating Stargate site using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and NVIDIA GB200 systems. OpenAI’s January 2026 community update said the site was training and serving frontier AI systems.
At the same time, the planned campus contains eight buildings, and local economic-development materials continue to describe the 1.2-gigawatt campus as under development. Construction and commissioning can continue even while an earlier phase serves real workloads.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesAs of August 11, 2026, the most defensible status statement is:
Stargate’s Abilene campus is partially operational. The first phase is running OpenAI workloads on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with NVIDIA GB200 systems, while construction and commissioning continue across the planned eight-building campus. The exact amount of live compute is not stated consistently across public sources.
This distinction matters because a data center can be operational in a limited sense—some racks are serving customers or internal workloads—without having reached its final electrical, cooling, networking, or building capacity.
9. Abilene is receiving an economic boost, but much of it is construction-driven
The project has already changed local economic activity. The City of Abilene reported unusually strong construction activity, including new construction permits and increased hotel occupancy. Construction workers and related personnel have filled hotels, apartments, and RV parks, creating visible demand for local services.
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A city planning report estimated approximately 57 new full-time jobs associated with the data center’s local labor-market effect. That figure should not be presented as the project’s total construction workforce, total future employment, or a guaranteed permanent job count. It describes a local labor-market effect identified in the city’s report.
The city also cautioned that some increases in sales-tax revenue were temporary and directly connected to data-center construction and the expanded workforce. That is a crucial distinction:
- Short-term gains can come from construction spending, temporary workers, hotel stays, food, fuel, and related services.
- Long-term fiscal benefits depend on completed taxable value, tax abatements, permanent employment, infrastructure costs, operating expenses, and future decisions by the companies using the campus.
A large construction project can therefore be economically significant without automatically producing an equally large permanent workforce or permanent tax stream.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.10. Tax incentives, housing, and community commitments are still being debated
Abilene approved tax-abatement arrangements connected to Lancium and affiliated data-center companies. A 2025 city notice described an 85% abatement on the taxable value of new improvements, repairs, and tangible personal property for 10 years, with separate agreements for the eight planned buildings.
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An abatement reduces the taxes collected on qualifying property for a defined period; it does not mean the project pays no taxes of any kind. The eventual public return depends on the exact agreements, taxable valuation, infrastructure obligations, public-service costs, and what happens after the abatement period ends.
OpenAI says Stargate communities should receive local workforce and infrastructure benefits. For Abilene, it announced plans for an OpenAI Academy intended to create credentials and pathways into high-quality jobs aligned with regional employers. The announcement is a plan and community commitment, not proof that a fully operating training program has already produced graduates or jobs.
The project has also intensified concerns about:
- housing availability and rental costs;
- traffic and road capacity;
- water and utility infrastructure;
- the availability of skilled workers;
- the balance between tax incentives and public revenue; and
- whether temporary construction activity will become durable economic growth.
Oracle’s July 1, 2026 discussion of Abilene acknowledged visible effects such as busier roads and fuller stores, while treating housing, infrastructure, and long-term planning as continuing local questions. The project’s final community impact will be easier to judge after more buildings are complete, operating employment is known, and the city can compare ongoing revenue with public costs.
What remains uncertain
The public disclosures establish the project’s identity, location, partners, hardware family, first-phase operation, and planned electrical scale. They do not answer every question a technical or local observer may have.
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- Current IT and utility load: Third-party estimates are useful but model-dependent and should not be confused with an official operating specification.
- Completion date: The timing for all eight buildings to finish construction and commissioning remains subject to change.
- Final power mix: Public comments indicate a broader energy strategy and have referenced gas use, but they do not establish a complete current generation profile.
- Final water use: OpenAI has published estimates, but actual consumption will depend on final buildout and operating conditions.
- Permanent local benefits: The long-term job count, tax receipts, housing effects, and infrastructure costs will become clearer after construction activity subsides.
- OpenAI Academy: OpenAI has announced the intended workforce pathway, but details such as launch timing, curriculum, credentialing partners, and outcomes remain to be established.
What to watch next
- Announcements that identify which of the eight buildings have been completed, energized, and commissioned.
- More precise disclosures about live IT load, rack count, and network capacity.
- ERCOT, utility, or local filings that clarify the campus’s actual electricity demand and generation arrangements.
- Evidence of actual water consumption rather than design estimates.
- Permanent job numbers and post-construction tax receipts from the City of Abilene.
- Specific launch details and measured results for the proposed OpenAI Academy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Stargate Abilene finished?
No. The first phase is operational and running OpenAI workloads, but the planned eight-building campus is still under construction or commissioning. The 1.2-gigawatt figure describes the planned electrical scale and approved interconnection, not a completed operating facility.
Does OpenAI own the Abilene data center?
OpenAI is the principal user and has operational responsibility within the Stargate structure, but the project involves several companies. Crusoe is the developer and infrastructure builder, Lancium provides the broader Clean Campus setting, and Oracle provides the relevant cloud infrastructure layer. The public record does not support describing every physical asset as solely owned by OpenAI.
What GPUs does Stargate Abilene use?
Public company disclosures confirm NVIDIA GB200 racks and systems, which are part of NVIDIA’s Blackwell generation. They do not provide one authoritative, continuously updated physical GPU count. Third-party estimates should be labeled as estimates.
How much power will the campus use?
The campus is associated with an approximately 1.2-gigawatt ERCOT-approved interconnection. That is the planned electrical connection scale, not proof that the live phase is currently consuming 1.2 gigawatts. Third-party estimates of current IT power are lower and model-dependent.
Does the data center consume a lot of water?
OpenAI says the site uses closed-loop cooling, with coolant circulating through sealed pipes after the initial fill. The company estimates an initial fill of roughly two Olympic-sized swimming pools per building and annual cooling-system water use at full buildout comparable to a medium-sized office building, or about four average households. Those are estimates, not independently verified operating results.
Is Stargate Abilene powered entirely by renewable energy?
That has not been established by the public record. Public reporting has referenced gas use during an earlier visit and a longer-term goal of using a broader mix of energy sources. It is more accurate to say that the project has a large ERCOT interconnection and an evolving power strategy.
The Bottom Line
Bottom line: Stargate Abilene is real and already operating, but it is not yet the finished 1.2-gigawatt AI campus often implied by headlines. Its first phase combines Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with NVIDIA GB200 systems for OpenAI workloads, while Crusoe, Lancium, and other partners continue building the larger eight-building site. The project’s eventual significance will depend not only on how much compute it adds, but also on its final power and water use, permanent employment, tax revenue, housing effects, and infrastructure costs for Abilene.
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