Short answer
Nearly two years after its announcement, Stargate is a set of seven US sites with more than 9 gigawatts planned, and Abilene, Texas, is the one clearly running at scale, at an estimated 824 megawatts of computing power. Stargate is less a single company building everything than a network of developers, utilities, Oracle and SoftBank, all building for OpenAI.
Follow-up question How can you follow Stargate's progress yourself?
In January 2025, our article on the announcement described Stargate as a statement of intent: up to $500 billion over four years to build AI computing in the United States for OpenAI. The useful question now is how much has become real.
The best independent public record comes from Epoch AI, a research group that tracks sites using satellite images, permits and filings. OpenAI's own posts announced the sites, but they are not a running progress report, so the figures here are Epoch's estimates unless stated otherwise. Epoch cautions that about one time in five its IT power estimate misses the real value by more than a factor of 1.4.
The seven sites
The following table shows Epoch's April 2026 review, the most recent site-by-site account we can point to. Power is total facility power.
| Site | Developer | Planned power | Projected completion | Power source | State in April 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abilene, Texas | Crusoe | 1.2 GW | Q4 2026 | On-site gas plus grid, including wind | Four of eight buildings operating |
| Shackelford County, Texas | Vantage | 2 GW | Q4 2028 | On-site gas microgrid | Roofing on first building |
| Doña Ana County, New Mexico | STACK Infrastructure | 2.2 GW | Q4 2028 | Two gas microgrids | Foundations |
| Milam County, Texas | SB Energy (SoftBank) | 1.2 GW | Q4 2028 | New generation and storage | Steel and roofing |
| Port Washington, Wisconsin | Vantage | 1.3 GW | Q4 2028 | Described as 70% solar, wind and batteries | Foundations |
| Saline Township, Michigan | Related Digital | 1.4 GW | Q4 2028 | DTE Energy, with batteries | Foundations |
| Lordstown, Ohio | SoftBank and Foxconn | under 0.3 GW | Unknown | Likely grid | Land cleared, mainly a factory site |
Together that is over 9 gigawatts, which Epoch compares to the peak demand of New York City. It also says this could support the equivalent of 20 million Nvidia H100 chips, about all the AI computing that existed worldwide at the end of 2025.
Abilene has moved since. Epoch's November 2026 ranking estimates it at about 824 megawatts of IT power, the third-largest running AI site it tracks, behind the Anthropic-Amazon campus in New Carlisle, Indiana, at 1,037 megawatts and SpaceX's Colossus 2 in Memphis at 946. Note that this is IT power, which is lower than total power, so it cannot be directly compared to the 1.2 gigawatt figure in the table.
Who does what
The original announcement named SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX as equity funders. In practice, the work falls to several kinds of companies:
| Role | Who | What they do |
|---|---|---|
| Customer | OpenAI | Uses the computing at all sites |
| Hardware owner | Oracle at most sites; SoftBank at Milam and Lordstown | Owns the chips and systems, according to 2025 announcements cited by Epoch |
| Developer | Crusoe, Vantage, STACK, Related Digital, SB Energy | Finds land, builds the buildings |
| Power supplier | DTE Energy and others, or on-site plants | Delivers or generates electricity |
| Chip supplier | Nvidia, among others | Abilene runs Nvidia's Blackwell chips, per Epoch |
Why does this matter to a beginner? Because "Stargate" in a headline may mean an OpenAI contract, an Oracle lease or a local developer's project, and each one carries different risks.
What has already changed
Abilene's expansion is off. OpenAI had planned to grow the site to 2.1 gigawatts, then reversed course and directed that capacity elsewhere, according to Epoch. Microsoft has since partnered with Crusoe on the adjacent 900 megawatts. So the land is still being developed, only for a different customer.
The UK is paused. Bloomberg reported in April 2026, as summarized by Sherwood News, that OpenAI was pausing Stargate UK, a plan with Nvidia and Nscale to scale up to 31,000 GPUs, citing energy costs and regulation. OpenAI's statement said it continues to explore the project and will move ahead when conditions are right.
Local opposition has appeared. Epoch mentions that Lordstown has banned future data centers and that the Michigan site faces opposition. Our article on local opposition explains that wider movement.
The design changed in response to limits. Epoch reports that at least three sites plan on-site gas, to avoid waiting for grid connections, and that at least six use closed-loop cooling, to answer concerns about water. Both choices likely save time and raise cost.
What the $500 billion figure does and does not mean
It was a plan, spread over four years, not a sum in the bank. Epoch judges that the buildout has clearly started and that there is still time to finish by 2029, but it names financing, equipment and politics as open risks. Its April review came with an explicit reminder that plans can change after construction starts, as Abilene shows.
Try it: Pick one site from the table and search for its county or township name plus "data center". Compare the most recent local report with the April state shown here, and note anything that has moved.
How can you follow Stargate's progress yourself?
Use sources that are hard to spin. Epoch publishes satellite images and updates its ranking. County and state records show permits and air-quality applications, which tend to arrive before press releases. Utility filings reveal how much power has actually been requested, and earnings calls from Oracle and SoftBank report what has been delivered, in their own words.
Be careful with trackers and blogs that repeat one another: many of these pages disagree on basic numbers, and few say what they checked. A simple method works well: keep a one-line note per site with the date, the source and whether the figure is IT or total power. Over a few months, that note will tell you more than any single headline.
Sources
- OpenAI Stargate: where the US sites stand — Epoch AI, April 23, 2026
- Largest AI data centers ranked by power capacity, 2026 — Epoch AI
- OpenAI's Stargate shrinks further as UK data center paused — Sherwood News, April 9, 2026
From the Guide to Artificial Intelligence, by Robert Scales, published by Holistic Hybrid Inc. Share and adapt it under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0: credit the guide, link to https://guidetoartificialintelligence.com/en/learn/stargate-status-who-builds/, no commercial use without permission, and keep the same licence.