In short
- Abilene, Texas, is the flagship site of OpenAI’s Stargate project. Crusoe builds it, Oracle supplies the computing, and OpenAI is the customer.
- Most numbers come from three different kinds of sources, and this page labels each: company statements, estimates by the research group Epoch AI, and press reports the companies have not confirmed.
- This year, press reports said the expansion of the site was dropped, Oracle pushed back on the reports, and Crusoe announced a 900 MW campus in Abilene for Microsoft.
How we work
We stick to documented facts, and we always say whose numbers they are: the companies’, a research group’s estimates, or press reports. The narration in the video is an AI-generated voice. The aerial views are Google Earth imagery from 11 March 2025, when most of the campus was still under construction.
Who is who
The site is known as the Lancium Clean Campus. Crusoe, a data center developer, is building it. Oracle supplies the computing, and Epoch AI lists Oracle as the owner of the chips. OpenAI is the customer.
Timeline: what the companies say
Crusoe says construction began in June 2024. The first phase was two buildings, nearly one million square feet, with more than 200 megawatts of IT capacity. OpenAI said Oracle began delivering the first Nvidia GB200 racks in June 2025. On September 30, Crusoe said the first phase was live, and in November it said it had topped off the eighth and final building.
How much is running
Nobody outside the companies can say, building by building. In April, Oracle posted that 200 megawatts was already operational. Epoch AI, which estimates from satellite images, puts it at about 420 megawatts by late May and projects around 840 by November. Those are Epoch’s estimates, not a measurement. Crusoe says the full campus should reach 1.2 gigawatts by the end of 2026. The 1.2 GW figure is Crusoe’s description of the campus’s total grid interconnection capacity, not an IT-load figure.
Power and cooling
Crusoe’s design called for a 1.2 gigawatt grid connection, plus battery storage, solar, and natural gas turbines as backup. Epoch’s review of the imagery found a substation built in 2022 and expanded in 2024, a larger one-gigawatt substation that looked complete by July, and an on-site gas turbine plant that looked finished by March. That is a reading of images, not an announcement.
The cooling is liquid, straight to the chip. Crusoe says the water recirculates in a closed loop, and calls it a zero-water-evaporation system. Each building is designed to host up to 50,000 Nvidia GB200 chips on one network. The heat still has to go somewhere: Epoch counted air-cooled chillers in the images, about 320 so far. That count is an estimate.
One more report: a winter outage
The Information wrote that a multi-day outage hit the site this winter, when cold weather affected some liquid cooling equipment, and that it strained relations between OpenAI and Crusoe. The report names no source, and we have not seen either company confirm it. We include it as a report, not a fact.
The expansion story
In early March, Bloomberg reported that Oracle and OpenAI would not go ahead with a planned expansion of the Abilene site, about 600 megawatts. Days later, Oracle posted that reports about the site were “false and incorrect,” and that two buildings were fully operational and the rest was progressing. Oracle’s post did not address the expansion directly. Bloomberg’s reporter then said Oracle and OpenAI were not moving ahead with the expansion lease, while their separate 4.5 gigawatt agreement remained on track. OpenAI’s Sachin Katti said the company considered expanding, but chose to put that capacity in other locations.
Who takes the rest
Reports say Nvidia put down a $150 million deposit to help Crusoe lease capacity to Meta, and is in talks. No deal had been signed in the reports we found. What is confirmed is Microsoft. On March 27, Crusoe announced a 900 megawatt campus there: two buildings, 336 megawatts of IT load each, powered by a 900 megawatt on-site plant behind the meter, with battery storage. The first building is expected to be energized in mid-2027. With the existing campus, Crusoe puts the Abilene site at about 2.1 gigawatts.
The city
Crusoe said about 2,000 workers were on site daily in March 2025, and expected nearly 5,000 at peak. The Development Corporation of Abilene estimated the first phase alone at about one billion dollars of economic impact over twenty years. Abilene’s mayor, Weldon Hurt, said the Microsoft project will strengthen the local economy and create high-paying jobs.
Behind the meter
“Behind the meter” means the generator sits on the customer’s side of the utility meter, so its power feeds the site directly instead of passing through the grid. Crusoe says the Microsoft campus pairs a 900 megawatt plant with battery storage. That pairing makes sense. Thousands of chips starting and stopping together make the load jump, and a gas turbine cannot follow that instantly, so batteries cover the gap. A substation is where high-voltage power is stepped down to what the site can use. One gigawatt through a substation is roughly the output of a large power plant.
What we’re watching
- Whether buildings five through eight come online, and when.
- Whether the campus reaches 1.2 gigawatts by the end of the year.
- Whether Microsoft’s first building is energized on time in 2027.
Sources
- Crusoe expands AI data center campus in Abilene to 1.2 gigawatts (18 Mar 2025) Primary source , Crusoe
- Crusoe announces new 900 MW AI factory campus in Abilene, Texas, to support Microsoft AI infrastructure (27 Mar 2026) Primary source , Crusoe
- Frontier Data Centers: OpenAI Stargate Abilene (updated 17 Jul 2026) Epoch AI (estimates from satellite imagery)
- Frontier Data Centers: Crusoe Abilene expansion Epoch AI (estimates from satellite imagery)
- Oracle and OpenAI end plans to expand flagship data center (6 Mar 2026) Bloomberg
- Oracle and OpenAI drop plans to expand flagship Abilene Stargate site; Meta in talks to pick up Crusoe capacity with Nvidia's help Data Center Dynamics
- Oracle hits back at Stargate data center cancellation reports Tom's Hardware
Updates and corrections
No updates or corrections since publication.