OpenAI and Oracle held a ceremonial cornerstone-laying on Monday for the Michigan Stargate data-center campus, a project the companies say represents a $16 billion investment. The complex is being built near Saline Township and is developed by Related Digital.
Construction has already been underway for roughly three months, and the exterior of the first building is reported to be nearly complete. The Stargate initiative was introduced by Donald Trump at the White House in January 2025; the announcement event included Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, Szon Maszajosi, chairman of SoftBank, and Larry Ellison, chairman of Oracle.
At the White House announcement the companies pledged to build some $500 billion of AI infrastructure in the United States over four years. The Michigan Stargate site is expected to provide computing capacity on the order of one gigawatt.
Sam Altman told CNBC that OpenAI and its partners have invested more than $45 billion to date toward the Michigan plans, and he expects those investments to pay off based on market demand. He noted that while a gigawatt represents massive compute capacity, demand and user adoption of models — and resulting revenue growth — are clear.
Speaking on AI’s labor-market impact, Altman acknowledged people’s legitimate concerns about how AI will reshape jobs, but said his observation is that the companies hiring most aggressively today are those that use AI most extensively. By contrast, firms announcing layoffs tend to be the ones using the new technology least. He added that the industry has underestimated how central people remain in an economy and world built around human activity.
Developers and partners present Stargate as a strategic U.S. infrastructure investment tied to broader plans to expand AI compute capacity. The size of the investment, the major corporate backers, and the ongoing construction all indicate the campus could become an important node for AI compute in the coming years.
(Lead image is illustrative.)
