Oracle Denies Slowdown at AI Data Centre Project in US

Oracle said media reports about scrapping the AI data centre project in Abilene, Texas, are “false and incorrect,” adding that construction and leasing tied to its OpenAI commitments are continuing.

In a statement posted on X, the company said it is working with data centre developer Crusoe to build one of the largest AI data centre campuses globally and that parts of the facility are already operational.

“Crusoe and Oracle are operating in lockstep to deliver one of the world’s largest AI data centres in Abilene at record-breaking pace,” Oracle said. “Two buildings are completely operational, and the rest of the campus is on track.”

The company also said it has secured additional computing capacity to meet commitments tied to OpenAI’s infrastructure needs.

“Oracle has completed leasing for the additional 4.5GW to deliver on our commitments to OpenAI,” the company said. “We continuously evaluate sites around the world to meet the growing demand for OCI (Optical Compute Interconnect) by working with great partners and customers all the time.”

The statement comes after Bloomberg last week reported that Oracle and OpenAI had scrapped plans to expand a flagship AI data centre campus in Abilene due to financing negotiations and evolving infrastructure requirements.

The Abilene site is part of the broader Stargate initiative, an AI infrastructure project backed by OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and investment firm MGX that aims to invest up to $500 billion in AI data centres across the United States.

Developer Crusoe is building the Abilene campus, which is expected to house eight data centre buildings with about 1.2 gigawatts of power capacity when completed. Two of those buildings are already operational and being used by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to support OpenAI workloads.

Separately, Oracle and OpenAI have an agreement to develop up to 4.5 gigawatts of additional AI data centre capacity in the United States as part of the broader Stargate programme to support growing demand for AI computing.

Demand for large-scale data centres has surged as companies build infrastructure to run generative AI models and services, including tools such as ChatGPT and other enterprise AI systems.