ABILENE, Texas (AP) — The afternoon sun was so hot that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman traded his usual crewneck sweater for a T-shirt on the last legs of a Tuesday visit to the massive Stargate artificial intelligence data center complex that will power the future of ChatGPT.
OpenAI announced Tuesday that its flagship AI data center in Texas will be joined by five others around the U.S. as the ChatGPT maker aims to make good on the $500 billion infrastructure investment promoted by President Donald Trump earlier this year.
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From left, Rep. Jodey Arrington, Sen. Ted Cruz, Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman answer questions during a news conference on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025 in Abilene, Texas. (AP Photo/Matt O’Brien)
Mahesh Thiagarajan, executive vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, shows media the Stargate artificial intelligence data center project in Abilene, Texas on Tuesday Sept. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt O’Brien)
Arlene Mendler, who moved to a rural area north of Abilene, Texas more than 30 years ago for the natural setting, is photographed on Monday, Sept. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt O'Brien)
A sign advertises housing for workers along the road to the Stargate artificial intelligence data center complex on Monday, Sept. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt O'Brien)
An entrance to the Stargate artificial intelligence data center complex in Abilene, Texas on Monday, Sept. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt O'Brien)
Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, said it is building two more data center complexes in Texas, one in New Mexico, one in Ohio and another in a Midwest location it hasn't yet disclosed.
But it's the project in Abilene, Texas, that promised to be the biggest of them all, transforming what the city's mayor called an old railroad town.
Oracle executives visiting the eight-building complex said it is already on track to be the world’s largest AI supercluster once fully built, a reference to its network of hundreds of thousands of AI computer chips that will be running in its H-shaped buildings.
Altman said, “When you hit that button on ChatGPT, you really don’t — I don’t, at least” — think about what happens inside the data halls used to build and operate the chatbot.
He and Oracle's new co-CEO Clay Magouyrk also sought to emphasize the steps they've taken to reduce the energy-hungry complex's environmental effects on a drought-prone region of West Texas, where temperatures hit 97 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday.
“We’re burning gas to run this data center,” said Altman, but added that “in the long trajectory of Stargate” the hope is to rely on many other power sources.
The complex will require about 900 megawatts of electricity to power the eight buildings.
One is already operating, and a second that Altman and Magouyrk visited Tuesday is nearly complete. Each server rack in those buildings holds 72 of Nvidia’s GB200 chips, which are specially designed for the most intensive AI workloads. Each building is expected to have about 60,000 of them.
More than 6,000 workers now commute to the massive construction project each day, in what Mayor Weldon Hurt described as a significant boost to the local economy. The campus and nearby expansion will provide nearly 1,700 jobs onsite when fully operational, Oracle said, with “thousands more indirect jobs” predicted to be created.
Hand-made signs lining the roads to the facility advertise “move-in-ready" homes for workers.
“AI WORKERS? HUGE DISCOUNTS” says one promising homes with one to six bedrooms.
But Hurt also acknowledged that residents have mixed feelings about the project due to its water and energy needs.
The city's chronically stressed reservoirs were at roughly half-capacity this week. Residents must follow a two-day-a-week outdoor watering schedule, trading off based on whether their address numbers are odd or even.
One million gallons of water from the city's municipal water systems provides an “initial fill” for a closed-loop system that cools the data center's computers and keeps the water from evaporating. After that initial fill, Oracle expects each of the eight buildings to need another 12,000 gallons per year, which it describes as a “remarkably low figure for a facility of this scale.”
“These data centers are designed to not use water,” Magouyrk said. “All of the data centers that we’re building (in) this part of Stargate are designed to not use water. The reason we do that is because it turns out that’s harmful for the environment and this is a better solution.”
The closed-loop system shows that the developer is “taking its impact on local public water supplies seriously,” but the overall environmental effect is more nuanced because such systems require more electricity, which also means higher indirect water usage through power generation, said Shaolei Ren, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, who has studied AI's environmental toll.
Indeed, the data center complex includes a new gas-fired power plant, using natural gas turbines similar to those that power warships. The companies say the plant is meant to provide backup power for the data halls and is a better option than traditional diesel generators. Most of the power comes from the local grid, sourced from a mix of natural gas with the sprawling wind and solar farms that dot the windy and sunny region.
Ren said that “even with emission-reduction measures, the health impacts of essentially turning the data center site into a power plant deserve further study for nearby communities.”
Arlene Mendler, a Stargate neighbor, said she wished she had more say in the project that eliminated a vast tract of mesquite shrubland, home to coyotes and roadrunners.
“It has completely changed the way we were living,” said Mendler, who lives across the street. “We moved up here 33 years ago for the peace, quiet, tranquility. After we got home from work, we could ride horses down the road. It was that type of a place.”
Now, she doesn't know what to do about the constant cacophony of construction sounds or the bright lights that have altered her nighttime views. The project was essentially a done deal once she found out about it.
“They took 1,200 acres and just scraped it to bare dirt,” said her husband, Fred Mendler.
The first time most residents heard of Stargate — at least by that name — was when Trump announced the project shortly after returning to the White House in January. Originally planned as a facility to mine cryptocurrency, developers had pivoted and expanded their designs to tailor the project to the AI boom sparked by ChatGPT.
The partnership said at that time it was investing $100 billion — and eventually up to $500 billion — to build large-scale data centers and the energy generation needed to further AI development. More recently, OpenAI signed a $300 billion deal to buy computing capacity from Oracle. It's a huge bet for the San Francisco-based AI startup, which was founded as a nonprofit.
OpenAI and Oracle invited media and politicians, including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, to tour the site for the first time Tuesday.
Cruz called Texas “ground zero for AI” because if “you’re building a data center, what do you want? No. 1, you want abundant, low-cost energy.”
Of the other five Stargate data center projects announced Tuesday, Oracle is working with OpenAI to build one just northeast of Abilene, in Shackelford County, Texas, and another in New Mexico's Doña Ana County. It also said it is working to build one in the Midwest.
Softbank said it has broken ground on two more in Lordstown, Ohio, and in Milam County, Texas.
The projects offer OpenAI a way to break out from its longtime partnership with Microsoft, which until recently was the startup's exclusive computing partner. Altman told The Associated Press his company has been “severely limited for the value we can offer to people.”
“ChatGPT is slow. It’s not as smart as we’d like to be. Many users can’t use it as much as they would like," Altman said. "We have many other ideas and products we want to build.”
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The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives.
From left, Rep. Jodey Arrington, Sen. Ted Cruz, Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman answer questions during a news conference on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025 in Abilene, Texas. (AP Photo/Matt O’Brien)
Mahesh Thiagarajan, executive vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, shows media the Stargate artificial intelligence data center project in Abilene, Texas on Tuesday Sept. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt O’Brien)
Arlene Mendler, who moved to a rural area north of Abilene, Texas more than 30 years ago for the natural setting, is photographed on Monday, Sept. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt O'Brien)
A sign advertises housing for workers along the road to the Stargate artificial intelligence data center complex on Monday, Sept. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt O'Brien)
An entrance to the Stargate artificial intelligence data center complex in Abilene, Texas on Monday, Sept. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt O'Brien)
Indiana’s Republican-led Senate has decisively rejected a redrawn congressional map that would have favored their party, defying months of pressure from President Donald Trump and delivering a stark setback to the White House ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
The vote on Thursday was overwhelmingly against the proposed redistricting, with more Republicans opposing than supporting the measure, signaling the limits of Trump’s influence even in one of the country’s most conservative states.
Trump has been urging Republicans nationwide to redraw their congressional maps in an unusual campaign to help the party maintain its thin majority in the House of Representatives. Although Texas, Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina went along, Indiana did not — despite cajoling and insults from the president and the possibility of primary challenges.
The latest:
Spokesperson Abigail Jackson said House Democrats are “selectively releasing cherry-picked photos with random redactions to try and create a false narrative.”
House Democrats released 19 photos from Epstein’s estate on Friday without captions or context. It included a black-and-white image of Trump alongside six women whose faces were blacked out. The committee did not say why their faces were blacked out.
Jackson said the Trump administration has done more to help Jeffrey Epstein’s victims than Democrats, by releasing thousands of pages of documents.
Trump signed a bill compelling the Justice Department to release case files last month, reversing course after he opposed the bill for months.
The fighting is rooted in a history of enmity over competing territorial claims. These claims largely stem from a 1907 map created while Cambodia was under French colonial rule, which Thailand maintains is inaccurate.
Tensions were exacerbated by a 1962 International Court of Justice ruling that awarded sovereignty to Cambodia, which still riles many Thais.
Thailand has deployed jet fighters to carry out airstrikes on what it says are military targets. Cambodia has deployed BM-21 rocket launchers with a range of 30-40 kilometers (19-25 miles).
According to data collected by public broadcaster ThaiPBS, at least six of the Thai soldiers who were killed were hit by rocket shrapnel.
The Thai army’s northeastern regional command said Thursday that some residential areas and homes near the border were damaged by BM-21 rocket launchers from Cambodian forces.
The Thai army also said it destroyed a tall crane atop a hill held by Cambodia where the centuries-old Preah Vihear temple is located, because it allegedly held electronic and optical devices used for military command and control purposes.
President Donald Trump says Thai and Cambodian leaders have agreed to renew a truce after days of deadly clashes had threatened to undo a ceasefire the U.S. administration had helped broker earlier this year.
Trump announced the agreement to restart the ceasefire in a social media posting on Friday following calls with Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet.
The original ceasefire in July was brokered by Malaysia and pushed through by pressure from Trump, who threatened to withhold trade privileges unless Thailand and Cambodia agreed. Despite the deal, the two countries carried on a bitter propaganda war and minor cross-border violence continued.
Department of Justice attorneys make that argument in responding to a lawsuit against the White House by the National Association for the Deaf.
Government lawyers haven’t elaborated on how doing so might hamper the portrayal Trump seeks to present to the public. But overturning policies encompassing diversity, equity and inclusion have become a hallmark of his second administration.
The association sued the White House in May, saying not using American Sign Language interpretation at press briefings or when Trump gives remarks prohibits “meaningful access to the White House’s real-time communications” to the Deaf community and hard of hearing.
A White House spokesperson did not immediately comment Friday.
President Donald Trump’s administration is ending the temporary status that has allowed more than 4,500 Ethiopians to live and work in the United States for more than three years.
The decision announced Friday by the Department of Homeland Security comes as the White House moves to put more immigrants in the U.S. eligible for deportation. Ethiopia is the latest in a string of countries to lose Temporary Protection Status.
DHS said that conditions in Ethiopia have improved and no longer pose a serious threat to the safety of returning Ethiopian nationals.
Ethiopians in the U.S. with no other lawful status have 60 days to voluntarily leave the country, said DHS. After February 13, 2026, DHS may arrest and deport Ethiopians whose TPS has been terminated.
During the Biden administration, the number of people protected by TPS grew significantly. Nearly 1 million Venezuelans and Haitians were protected. President Trump has already ended TPS for Venezuelans, Hondurans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Ukrainians, and thousands of people from Syria, Afghanistan, Nepal and Cameroon.
Trump successfully harnessed voter anxiety over the economy, immigration and crime last year to retake the White House — and lift plenty of other Republicans into office with him. But as the party tries to keep its grip on complete control in Washington, that strategy may be harder to replicate.
Republicans have lost a series of elections over the past month, some resoundingly. The latest setbacks came this week when a Democrat won the Miami mayor’s race for the first time in three decades. Democrats also won a special election in a historically Republican district in Georgia.
There are also signs that Trump’s influence over his party has its limits, and he failed Thursday to persuade Indiana state senators to approve a new congressional map that could have helped Republicans pick up two more seats.
Perhaps most concerning for Republicans, Trump is losing ground on the very issues that powered his comeback victory last year, potentially undermining his utility as a surrogate for the party’s candidates in the midterm elections. Only 31% of U.S. adults now approve of how he’s handling the economy, down from 40% in March, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Trump was sued on Friday by preservationists seeking an architecture review and congressional approval over his White House ballroom project.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is asking a federal court to stop Trump’s White House ballroom project until it goes through comprehensive design reviews and public comments and wins approval from Congress.
The National Trust argues that Trump, by fast-tracking the project, has committed multiple violations of the Administrative Procedures Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, while also exceeding his constitutional authority by not seeking congressional approval for a project of this scale.
Trump, a Republican, already has bypassed the federal government’s usual building practices and historical reviews when he razed the East Wing of the White House. He has more recently fired the initial architects for a ballroom that itself would be nearly twice the size of the White House before East Wing’s demolition.
House Democrats released a selection of photos from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, including some of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and the former Prince Andrew.
The 19 photos released by Democratic lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee were a small part of more than 95,000 they received from the estate of Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges.
The photos released Friday were separate from the case files that the Department of Justice is now compelled to release.
The photos were released without captions or context and included a black-and-white image of Trump alongside six women whose faces were blacked out. The committee did not say why their faces were blacked out.
Trump has signed an executive order aimed at blocking states from crafting their own regulations for artificial intelligence, saying the burgeoning industry is at risk of being stifled by a patchwork of onerous rules while in a battle with Chinese competitors for supremacy.
Members of Congress from both parties, as well as civil liberties and consumer rights groups, have pushed for more regulations on AI, saying there is not enough oversight for the powerful technology.
But Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that “there’s only going to be one winner” as nations race to dominate artificial intelligence, and China’s central government gives its companies a single place to go for government approvals.
A bipartisan group in Congress is urging the Education Department to add nursing to a list of college programs that are considered “professional,” adding to public outcry after nurses were omitted from a new agency definition.
The Trump administration’s list of professional programs includes medicine, law and theology but leaves out nursing and some other fields that industry groups had asked to be included. The “professional” label would allow students to borrow larger amounts of federal loans to pursue graduate degrees in those fields.
The president will sign a bill awarding Congressional Gold Medals to members of the U.S. men’s ice hockey team who defeated the heavily favored Soviet Union team during the Cold War.
The game held in Lake Placid, New York, is widely regarded as one of the greatest upsets in the history of sports.
President Donald Trump reacts to guests in the Grand Foyer of the White House during the Congressional Ball, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania greet guests in the Grand Foyer of the White House during the Congressional Ball, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
