OpenAI’s biggest data center raises $11.6 bn: report

One of OpenAI’s data center that is being built in Texas has raised $11.6 billion in new funding, bringing its total capital raised to $15 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The funding is a mix of debt and equity, that will help the data center—located in Abilene city—to expand from two to eight buildings, according to startup Crusoe, which is constructing the site, the WSJ report said.

Investors include Crusoe and Blue Owl Capital.

Once complete, the Abilene facility will be the largest data center used by the ChatGPT maker.

Each building will be capable of operating up to 50,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips, used to train large language models (LLMs), according to WSJ.

The data center is expected to go operational by next year.

OpenAI has been rapidly expanding its infrastructure and reducing its dependency on Microsoft.

The Sam Altman-led firm has relied too much on Microsoft for computing power; however, it began diversifying its partnerships last year after performance concerns.

The company later reached an agreement with Oracle to support its growing needs.

The Abilene site is also tied to OpenAI’s larger infrastructure program, known as Stargate.

The $500 billion project was announced in January by Altman, in collaboration with SoftBank and Oracle.

Earlier this month, Altman posted an update on the project on X, stating: “great to see progress on the first stargate in abilene with our partners at oracle today. will be the biggest ai training facility in the world.”

great to see progress on the first stargate in abilene with our partners at oracle today. will be the biggest ai training facility in the world. the scale, speed, and skill of the people building this is awesome.

— Sam Altman (@sama) May 7, 2025

Meanwhile, the OpenAI chief executive officer said earlier this month that his company will not shift to a fully for-profit structure, and OpenAI will maintain nonprofit control over operations.

“We made the decision for the nonprofit to stay in control after hearing from civic leaders and having discussions with the offices of the attorneys general of California and Delaware,” Altman wrote in a letter to employees.

The company’s decision to shift to a for-profit structure had drawn criticism from AI safety advocates, former employees, and legal experts.