OpenAI unveils Stargate plan to stop AI data centers from raising power bills

OpenAI has introduced a new Stargate Community plan to stop its AI data centers from pushing up power prices in local neighborhoods. The company says it wants to “pay its way on energy” and avoid dumping new costs on residents living near its sites.

The plan is part of Stargate, a $500 billion long-term effort to build next-gen data centers for both AI training and inference. These massive facilities are backed by Oracle and other major investors. President Donald Trump supported the project when it was first announced in January 2025.

OpenAI promises to pay for local energy infrastructure at each site

Every Stargate location will now get its own community energy plan, which OpenAI says will be built based on what locals actually want. The company said the setup will be different in each area depending on the needs and stress on the grid.

“Depending on the site, this can range from bringing new dedicated power and storage that the project fully funds, to adding and paying for new energy generation and transmission resources,” OpenAI said.

This means OpenAI could either build brand new energy lines for its own needs or expand existing grids, as long as it pays the full cost. The company is clearly trying to get ahead of criticism that it’s eating up local power supplies and pushing up utility bills.

The move follows something similar from Microsoft, which announced a plan last week to cut water usage at its U.S. data centers. Microsoft also said it will pay power rates high enough to cover its share of demand, and will work with utility companies to expand the grid where needed.

These announcements show that as more and more AI models require huge power to train and run, the companies behind them are being forced to deal with the real-world impact of their expansion. Energy access is now one of the biggest challenges AI companies face.

But OpenAI is also dealing with something else: a huge lawsuit.

Elon Musk is asking a California court to force OpenAI and Microsoft to pay him between $79 billion and $134 billion in damages. He claims they defrauded him by dumping OpenAI’s original nonprofit structure and partnering up for profit.

Elon helped start OpenAI back in 2015 and donated $38 million in early funding. His lawyer now says that, based on OpenAI’s $500 billion valuation, Elon should be owed a chunk of the company’s worth, since that early money helped get it off the ground.

“Just as an early investor in a startup company may realize gains many orders of magnitude greater than the investor’s initial investment, the wrongful gains that OpenAI and Microsoft have earned – and which Mr. Musk is now entitled to disgorge – are much larger than Mr. Musk’s initial contributions,” wrote his lawyer, Steven Molo, in the filing.

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