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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.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 Doa 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 s much as they would like,” Altman said. “We have many other ideas and products we want to build.”-The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives. Matt O’Brien, AP Technology Writer
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E-Commerce
U.S.-listed shares of Lithium Americas surged more than 70% in premarket trading on Wednesday after a report said the Trump administration was seeking an equity stake of up to 10% in the miner, the latest sign of involvement in industries the government sees as critical to national security. Reuters reported late on Tuesday, citing two people familiar with the discussions, that the administration was discussing taking the stake in the company as part of talks to renegotiate a $2.26 billion government loan for its Thacker Pass lithium mine. “Markets can view equity stakes as a leading indicator of favorable ROIC (return on invested capital) the incentive for taking equity stakes seem significantly higher than withdrawing funding,” said analysts at Jefferies. The loan from the U.S. Energy Department for the Thacker Pass project, a venture with General Motors, was approved by Trump at the end of his first term. Shares of the automaker, which owns 38% of the mine, gained 2.9% before the bell. When it opens in 2028, the project is expected to become the Western Hemisphere’s largest source of lithium and could far surpass larger peer Albemarle’s facility in the region. The project has long been touted as a key way to boost U.S. critical minerals production and cut reliance on China, the world’s largest lithium processor. The Trump administration has also moved to take a stake in chipmaker Intel and mining company MP Materials as part of efforts to improve domestic manufacturing activity and re-shore supply chains to the U.S. Lithium Americas had split itself into two, separating its North American and Argentine businesses in November 2022 to boost focus on the Thacker Pass project. The company’s net loss nearly doubled in the second quarter, from a year-earlier, its earnings report showed last month. The stock was last up 67.1% at $5.13 before the bell, after falling nearly 7% in the previous session. The news also lifted other lithium miners. Albermarle gained 5.2% while Sigma Lithium climbed 5.3%. U.S.-listed shares of SQM rose 2.7% in light volumes. Purvi Agarwal, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Hundreds of federal employees who lost their jobs in Elon Musk’s cost-cutting blitz are being asked to return to work.The General Services Administration has given the employees who managed government workspaces until the end of the week to accept or decline reinstatement, according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press. Those who accept must report for duty on Oct. 6 after what amounts to a seven-month paid vacation, during which time the GSA in some cases racked up high costs passed along to taxpayers to stay in dozens of properties whose leases it had slated for termination or were allowed to expire.“Ultimately, the outcome was the agency was left broken and understaffed,” said Chad Becker, a former GSA real estate official. “They didn’t have the people they needed to carry out basic functions.”Becker, who represents owners with government leases at Arco Real Estate Solutions, said GSA has been in a “triage mode” for months. He said the sudden reversal of the downsizing reflects how Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency had gone too far, too fast. Rehiring of purged federal employees GSA was established in the 1940s to centralize the acquisition and management of thousands of federal workplaces. Its return to work request mirrors rehiring efforts at in several agencies targeted by DOGE. Last month, the IRS said it would allow some employees who took a resignation offer to remain on the job. The Labor Department has also brought back some employees who took buyouts, while the National Park Service earlier reinstated a number of purged employees.Critical to the work of such agencies is the GSA, which manages many of the buildings. Starting in March, thousands of GSA employees left the agency as part of programs that encouraged them to resign or take early retirement. Hundreds of others those subject to the recall notice were dismissed as part of an aggressive push to reduce the size of the federal workforce. Though those employees did not show up for work, some continue to get paid.GSA representatives didn’t respond to detailed questions about the return-to-work notice, which the agency issued Friday. They also declined to discuss the agency’s headcount, staffing decisions or the potential cost overruns generated by reversing its plans to terminate leases.“GSA’s leadership team has reviewed workforce actions and is making adjustments in the best interest of the customer agencies we serve and the American taxpayers,” an agency spokesman said in an email.Democrats have assailed the Trump administration’s indiscriminate approach to slashing costs and jobs. Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona, the top Democrat on the subcommittee overseeing the GSA, told AP there is no evidence that reductions at the agency “delivered any savings.”“It’s created costly confusion while undermining the very services taxpayers depend on,” he said.DOGE identified the agency, which had about 12,000 employees at the start of the Trump administration, as a chief target of its campaign to reduce fraud, waste and abuse in the federal government.A small cohort of Musk’s trusted aides embedded in GSA’s headquarters, sometimes sleeping on cots on the agency’s sixth floor, and pursued plans to abruptly cancel nearly half of the 7,500 leases in the federal portfolio. DOGE also wanted GSA to sell hundreds of federally owned buildings with the goal of generating billions in savings.GSA started by sending more than 800 lease cancellation notices to landlords, in many cases without informing the government tenants. The agency also published a list of hundreds of government buildings that were targeted for sale. DOGE’s massive job cuts produced little savings Pushback to GSA’s dumping of its portfolio was swift, and both initiatives have been dialed back. More than 480 leases slated for termination by DOGE have since been spared. Those leases were for offices scattered around the country that are occupied by such agencies as the IRS, Social Security Administration and Food and Drug Administration.DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts,” which once boasted that the lease cancellations alone would save nearly $460 million, has since reduced that estimate to $140 million by the end of July, according to Becker, the former GSA real estate official.Meanwhile, GSA embarked on massive job cuts. The administration slashed GSA’s headquarters staff by 79%, its portfolio managers by 65% and facilities managers by 35%, according to a federal official briefed on the situation. The official, who was not authorized to speak to the media, provided the statistics on condition of anonymity.As a result of the internal turmoil, 131 leases expired without the government actually vacating the properties, the official said. The situation has exposed the agencies to steep fees because property owners have not been able to rent out those spaces to other tenants.The public may soon get a clearer picture of what transpired at the agency.The Government Accountability Office, an independent congressional watchdog, is examining the GSA’s management of its workforce, lease terminations and planned building disposals and expects to issue findings in the coming months, said David Marroni, a senior GAO official. Foley reported from Iowa City, Iowa. Joshua Goodman and Ryan J. Foley, Associated Press
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