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In the middle of the Texas desert, 6,400 workers are building a complex that will consume 10 gigawatts of energy — more than entire countries — to power the most powerful artificial intelligence ever planned
Announced in January 2025 by OpenAI in partnership with Oracle, SoftBank, and the MGX fund, Project Stargate is the largest infrastructure project underway on the planet.
The total projected investment is US$ 500 billion by 2029.
To put that number in perspective: it’s more than the annual GDP of countries like Colombia, the Philippines, or Finland.
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Grande ABC will have projects against flooding with drainage, desilting of the Tamanduateí, and a R$ 116 million project to change a vulnerable area in Santo André.
And all of this to build artificial intelligence chip factories in the desert.
The first campus, in Abilene, Texas — 290 km west of Dallas — has been operational since September 2025.
Inside, racks with thousands of Nvidia chips process data 24 hours a day on Oracle Cloud infrastructure.
There are 6,400 workers per day on a single site — and 5 new sites are already planned
According to CNBC, the Abilene campus employs over 6,400 construction workers daily.
Each completed site will generate approximately 1,700 permanent jobs.
In total, the six planned sites are expected to create over 25,000 direct jobs — in addition to tens of thousands of indirect jobs.
In addition to Abilene, five new locations have already been announced:
- Shackelford County, Texas — second campus in the state
- Milam County, Texas — third in Texas
- Doña Ana County, New Mexico — near the Mexico border
- Lordstown, Ohio — in the industrial belt
- A site in the Midwest of the USA, yet to be revealed
Therefore, Texas alone accounts for three of the project’s six campuses.
The reason is simple: cheap energy, available land, and generous tax incentives.
The project will require 10 gigawatts — more energy than countries like Paraguay or Jordan consume
Perhaps the most impressive fact about Stargate is not the money, but the energy.
The project has committed to 10 gigawatts of energy capacity.
For comparison: 10 GW powers approximately 7.5 million American homes.
Furthermore, it’s more than the total installed capacity of dozens of countries.
The energy demand from AI data centers is transforming the United States’ electricity sector.
According to Texas Standard, the state is already facing debates on how to accommodate the energy consumption of the new data centers without harming the supply to the population.
Renewable energy exceeded 109% of global demand in 2025 — but AI could reverse part of this achievement by requiring continuous base-load energy sources.
The global race for AI infrastructure: whoever builds fastest gains the advantage
Stargate is not just a civil construction project.
It’s a geopolitical gamble.
Whoever has the largest computing infrastructure will dominate the next generation of artificial intelligence.
The United States leads for now — but China is investing billions in its own AI campuses.
The difference is that Stargate concentrates private capital from companies like OpenAI and SoftBank, while the Chinese model relies more on state investment.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, described the project as “the most important infrastructure of our generation”.
However, critics point out that the concentration of so much computational power in a few hands raises questions about regulation and security.
Still, construction is progressing faster than anticipated.
According to OpenAI, the consortium has already committed US$ 400 billion of the planned US$ 500 billion — and is “on track” to reach the total goal.
Small Texas towns are being transformed by the arrival of workers
Abilene has about 125,000 inhabitants.
The arrival of 6,400 construction workers — plus thousands of technicians and engineers — is changing the local economy.
Hotels are full. Restaurants are hiring. Rents have gone up.
The same phenomenon occurred in Texas oil towns during the fracking booms.
The difference is that the humanoid robots that AI is creating may, ironically, replace some of these same workers in the future.
For now, however, it is human hands that are building the infrastructure of artificial intelligence.
The world’s largest construction project in 2026 is not made of concrete and steel — it’s made of silicon and fiber optics
Historically, the world’s largest construction projects were dams, bridges, tunnels, and railways.
In 2026, the most expensive project on the planet is a network of climate-controlled warehouses full of chips.
US$ 500 billion surpasses the cost of the International Space Station (US$ 150 billion), the expanded Panama Canal (US$ 5.5 billion), and the Trans-Siberian Railway — combined.
Thus, Stargate redefines what “megaproject” means in the 21st century.
Physical infrastructure still matters — but now it serves a digital infrastructure that can be even more transformative.
Will we look back at Stargate in 50 years the way we look at the construction of the Hoover Dam in the 1930s today?
However, there’s an important caveat: projects of this scale historically face delays, budget overruns, and regulatory hurdles. The promised US$ 500 billion still needs to materialize — and the history of technology is full of billion-dollar bets that never came to fruition.
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