OpenAI on Tuesday announced its Stargate Community plan, designed to offset energy usage and ensure its operations do not increase electricity costs for local communities.

The Stargate initiative, valued at $500 billion, is a multi-year effort to build AI data centers for training and inference.

It is backed by major investors, including Oracle, and received support from United States President Donald Trump when first unveiled in January 2025.

As energy access increasingly limits AI growth, several tech companies are investing directly in power infrastructure to support larger and more numerous data centers.

OpenAI said each Stargate site will now feature a locally tailored community plan, developed based on community input and local concerns.

“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,” added.

OpenAI’s announcement follows a similar initiative unveiled by ⁠Microsoft last week, aimed at reducing water usage at its U.S. data centers and minimizing any impact on local communities from potential surge in electricity prices.

Microsoft ‍has said ⁠it will pay utility rates sufficient to cover its power expenses and collaborate with local utilities to ⁠expand supply as needed for its data centers.