Michigan: OpenAI Stargate project “largest investment in state history”

Saline Township in Michigan is poised to become a major center for U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure, thanks to a proposed new data center campus announced by OpenAI, Oracle, and Related Digital. According to the announcement from Related Digital, if the Michigan Public Service Commission approves the project - part of the broader Stargate initiative - the facility will begin construction in 2026 and open with more than one gigawatt of capacity. 

"Oracle is excited for Michigan to be the next site for our Stargate project with OpenAI,” said Mahesh Thiagarajan, executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, adding that the partners were working to “rapidly expand our cloud capacity to meet the unprecedented demand for AI."

The project reflects the scale of what OpenAI and its partners have outlined for the broader Stargate project, which includes seven data centers across the U.S., with a combined planned capacity exceeding 8 gigawatts and projected investments of more than $450 billion over 3 years, according to Reuters. 

The facility is expected to generate substantial employment opportunities. With the announcement estimating over 2,500 union construction jobs during the building phase, alongside more than 450 permanent operational positions once online. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer even characterized the Saline project as "the largest economic project in Michigan history".

In an effort to eliminate the potential of additional water needs from the Great Lakes, 

the roughly 250-acre site will use a closed-loop cooling system, which the companies said can minimize water consumption to levels comparable with those of a typical office building.

The statement also said that local electricity provider DTE Energy had pledged that the facility’s power will come from existing infrastructure, supplemented by new battery storage financed by the developers. Company representatives suggested that this will help prevent local energy rate impacts. 

The campus, referred to as "The Barn" because of a historic red barn at the entrance, is slated to include three large, single-story buildings totaling over 1.65 million square feet and the the project will pursue LEED certification for ‘green’ buildings.