OpenAI & Oracle’s US$30bn Deal: The Future of Data Centres?
OpenAI is set to rent an additional 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of data centre power capacity from Oracle in the US in a US$30bn bid to support its continued growth.
According to Bloomberg, this move is all part of Stargate – a US$500bn AI infrastructure project led by OpenAI and Oracle, in addition to SoftBank and other partners. The goal of the initiative is to build large-scale data centres across the US to support the development of advanced AI models and maybe even artificial general intelligence (AGI).
As part of this, OpenAI announced in January 2025 it would be buying significant computing power from Oracle specifically for AI.
So far, Oracle has been developing a large data centre in Abilene, Texas, reportedly for OpenAI.
The race to build AI-ready data centres
Oracle now faces unprecedented data centre demand as a result of this partnership. In order to meet OpenAI’s needs, Bloomberg reports the tech giant is set to develop multiple data centres across the US with multiple business partners.
The locations being considered are reportedly Texas, Michigan, Wisconsin and Wyoming – in addition to the existing Abilene site – with OpenAI also considering sites in New Mexico, Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Stargate has raised about US$50bn so far from its founding partners, according to The Financial Times, which includes Oracle and Abu Dhabi fund MGX. In 2025, Oracle achieved US$10.3bn in annual revenue from its data centre infrastructure business – just over a third of what is expected from the OpenAI deal.
The 4.5GW of power expected is roughly the equivalent of a quarter of current operational data centre capacity in the US.
Oracle’s data centre push
In March 2025, Oracle announced a US$5bn investment plan over the next five years to expand its cloud infrastructure across the UK.
The move was to support expansion of its distributed cloud portfolio, which includes public cloud regions – dedicated cloud capabilities for organisations requiring strict control – and hybrid cloud services for companies that maintain on-premises operations.
Despite being slower to enter the market than its competitors, Oracle has experienced a large surge in demand for its infrastructure as companies are looking to expand their data centre assets to support AI.
The company has built a large network of data centres to support these cloud computing services, focusing on energy efficiency and sustainability. This includes exploring new technologies such as AI and machine learning to optimise its data centre operations.
Additionally, it has pledged to invest US$7bn in the Stargate venture and plans to spend US$25bn in capital expenditure next year.
“Oracle will be the number one builder and operator of cloud infrastructure data centres,” Larry Ellison told investors earlier this year, as reported by The Financial Times. “We will build and operate more cloud infrastructure data centres than all of our cloud infrastructure competitors.”
Larry Ellison was one of those on stage with US President Donald Trump at the start of the year, alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and head of SoftBank Masayoshi Son to announce Stargate.
