OpenAI's Stargate Expands to Michigan, Passing 8GW of Planned Capacity

OpenAI has announced a new Stargate campus in Saline Township, Michigan, bringing the company's planned AI infrastructure capacity to more than 8 gigawatts and over $450 billion in committed investment over the next three years.

The Michigan site is part of OpenAI's 4.5GW partnership with Oracle. Combined with capacity from six previously announced U.S. Stargate sites developed with Oracle and SoftBank, the project keeps the company ahead of schedule on the $500 billion, 10-gigawatt commitment it announced in January.

The number matters because compute capacity has become the binding constraint on frontier AI development. Stargate is OpenAI's answer: a network of massive data center campuses designed to secure the power and silicon needed to train and run increasingly large models. Crossing the 8GW threshold means OpenAI has now locked in plans for roughly 80 percent of the 10GW target, less than a year after making the pledge.

The Michigan campus in detail

Related Digital will develop the Saline Township site, with construction expected to begin in early 2026. OpenAI says the project will create more than 2,500 union construction jobs.

Two design choices address the issues that most often stall data center projects: water and power. The campus will use a closed-loop cooling system that OpenAI says significantly reduces water consumption. DTE Energy will serve the site using existing excess transmission capacity, which the company says avoids impacts on local energy supply. Any grid upgrades required to support operations will be funded by the project rather than local ratepayers.

That last point is not incidental. Across the United States, utilities and regulators have pushed back on data center developments amid concerns that residential customers will foot the bill for grid expansions that primarily serve hyperscale AI operators. By committing to fund its own infrastructure upgrades, OpenAI is preempting one of the most common political objections to its buildout.

A national footprint

The Michigan expansion builds on Stargate sites OpenAI has already announced in Texas, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Ohio. The company frames the geographic spread as deliberate.

"The infrastructure and manufacturing needed to advance AI give us a real chance to reindustrialize the country, and it should happen in places like Michigan," OpenAI said in its announcement. "AI will unlock major benefits—from better healthcare to improved public services—and the buildout required to get there will generate significant opportunities along the way."

OpenAI ties the Michigan choice to the state's industrial heritage. "Michigan has long been at the center of American engineering and manufacturing," the company said. "We're proud to build here and to continue expanding the infrastructure needed to ensure the benefits of AI reach everyone."

Why the stakes extend beyond OpenAI

Stargate is one of the largest private infrastructure programs in U.S. history, and its scale has consequences that reach past a single company. OpenAI says its sites are "creating jobs, spurring investment in modern energy and industrial systems, and helping strengthen the supply chains needed to support the next generation of AI." Each campus requires construction labor, transformers, turbines, cooling equipment, and fiber—demand that ripples through domestic manufacturing and energy markets.

The program also carries policy weight. OpenAI has positioned Stargate as an instrument of American industrial strategy, arguing in a filing with the Office of Science and Technology Policy that AI buildout can reindustrialize the country. The choice of Michigan—home of the auto industry's manufacturing base—fits that argument directly. If AI data centers can anchor a new generation of union construction jobs and grid investment in the Midwest, the industry gains a political constituency that extends beyond coastal tech hubs.

The remaining gap is meaningful. OpenAI has announced just over 8GW of planned capacity against a 10GW commitment, and roughly $50 billion in investment remains to reach the $500 billion figure. All of it is slated for the next three years. Whether the timeline holds depends on permitting, power procurement, and supply chains—the same constraints that have slowed data center construction industry-wide.

For now, the Michigan announcement signals that OpenAI intends to keep announcing sites at a rapid clip, and that it will continue prioritizing locations where energy capacity already exists and local costs can be contained. Construction in Saline Township starting in early 2026 will be an early test of whether the pace holds.