Larry Ellison, chairman of Oracle Corporation, speaking with President Trump, SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, announcing Stargate at the White House in January (Jabin Botsford/Getty Images)

OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank announce five new AI data center sites, putting Stargate ahead of schedule

Two of the sites will be in Texas, one in New Mexico, one in Ohio, and one in the Midwest.

David Crowther

9/24/25 4:38AM

Since Oracle’s $300 billion deal with OpenAI grabbed the headlines a few weeks ago — sending Oracle’s stock soaring and briefly making its chairman the world’s richest person — some of the biggest questions involved what the cloud computing company would do to deliver all the capacity it had promised, and how that would be financed.

Now, we’re getting more specifics on these fronts: OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank announced late last night that they would be expanding Stargate with five new AI data center sites. Separately, Bloomberg is reporting that Oracle is looking to tap the US corporate bond market for $15 billion today, which includes a 40-year offering.

The data center build-out plans put the much-hyped Stargate initiative, announced by President Trump and the companies’ leaders back in January, ahead of schedule. Per a press release from OpenAI:

“The combined capacity from these five new sites — along with our flagship site in Abilene, Texas, and ongoing projects with CoreWeave — brings Stargate to nearly 7 gigawatts of planned capacity and over $400 billion in investment over the next three years. This puts us on a clear path to securing the full $500 billion, 10-gigawatt commitment we announced in January by the end of 2025, ahead of schedule.”

Three of the sites appear to fall under the $300 billion OpenAI and Oracle deal signed in July. Those three new sites are to be located in Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; and an unannounced site somewhere in the Midwest. The Stargate flagship site, in Abilene, Texas, is also being mooted for a potential expansion of 600 megawatts of capacity. Together, the Abilene upgrade plus the three new sites can deliver over 5.5 gigawatts of capacity, according to OpenAI, and will create over 25,000 on-site jobs.

The other two newly announced sites will be located in Lordstown, Ohio, and Milam County, Texas, and are being developed through a partnership between SoftBank and OpenAI, with the sites able to scale up to 1.5 gigawatts of capacity, per OpenAI’s statement.

The data center in Abilene, Texas, is reportedly already up and running on Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure, and the first Nvidia GB200 racks were delivered to the site in June.

As of 5 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Oracle’s stock was 0.4% higher. Nvidia, which jumped on Monday as investors cheered news of its bumper ~$100 billion OpenAI investment but dipped yesterday, has also been trading 0.7% higher in Wednesday’s premarket, as the company deepens its vertical integration across the AI supply chain.

Go Deeper: Bank of America explains why Nvidia almost has to invest in OpenAI and Intel

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Jon Keegan6h

Chinese AI chatbots reportedly must answer 2,000 questions, prove censorship compliance

For American companies building AI today, it is basically a free-for-all, a self-regulation zone with zero federal restrictions.

But for Chinese AI companies, the Chinese Communist Party exerts strict control over what models get released, and what questions they cannot answer.

A report in the Wall Street Journal details the rigorous tests that AI models are subjected to before being released on the global stage to compete with Western AI models.

AI models must answer 2,000 questions that are frequently updated, and achieve a 95% refusal rate for queries related to forbidden topics, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or human rights violations, according to the report.

The strict regulatory framework does have some safety advantages, such as preventing chatbots from sharing violent or pornographic material as well as protections from self-harm, an issue which American AI companies are currently wrestling with.

China Is Worried AI Threatens Party Rule—and Is Trying to Tame It

A report in the Wall Street Journal details the rigorous tests that AI models are subjected to before being released on the global stage to compete with Western AI models.

Rani Molla & Jon Keegan7h

Report: OpenAI has started mocking up what ads in ChatGPT could look like

2025 saw OpenAI ink a flurry of massive deals. To pay for it all, the company has realized that it can’t get there on $20 per month subscriptions alone. It also needs to monetize its hundreds of millions of free users.

To this end, despite repeatedly denying that ads are coming to ChatGPT, a new report says OpenAI is actually working through all those details.

Citing people familiar with the discussions, The Information reports employees have discussed different ways to prioritize sponsored information in ChatGPT in response to relevant queries.

Since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022, its offerings have been ad-free, relying instead on a freemium subscription model. But with Google recently telling advertisers it plans to bring ads to Gemini next year, and with OpenAI burning through truckloads of cash, the pressure to follow suit is growing.

OpenAI is looking at its AI model-developing competitors Meta and Google, who are pulling in hundreds of billions of dollars per year in advertising revenue, to arrive at this conclusion. It’s also seemingly inspired by Amazon’s (and Google’s) idea of sponsored product placement.

According to the report, in addition to trying to build new kinds of ad units, OpenAI is considering a few options:

Leaning into chats that are clearly about buying a product, and giving priority placement to sponsored results — though this only works out to about 2.1% of queries, according to OpenAI.
Showing ads based on the treasure trove of information it has on users, by mining their chat histories
A “sponsored” sidebar showing ads related to the conversation

But the company realizes it has to be careful to not turn off users, who might not trust a chatbot that peppers sensitive conversations with ads.

OpenAI’s Ads Push Starts Taking Shape

Citing people familiar with the discussions, The Information reports employees have discussed different ways to prioritize sponsored information in ChatGPT in response to relevant queries.

According to the report, in addition to trying to build new kinds of ad units, OpenAI is considering a few options:

Leaning into chats that are clearly about buying a product, and giving priority placement to sponsored results — though this only works out to about 2.1% of queries, according to OpenAI.
Showing ads based on the treasure trove of information it has on users, by mining their chat histories
A “sponsored” sidebar showing ads related to the conversation

But the company realizes it has to be careful to not turn off users, who might not trust a chatbot that peppers sensitive conversations with ads.

Rani Molla9h

NHTSA investigates Tesla Model 3 over concerns mechanical door release is “not readily accessible or easily identifiable”

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Wednesday it is investigating the emergency exit controls on 179,071 model year 2022 Tesla Model 3 vehicles after receiving a defect petition alleging the vehicles’ “mechanical door release is hidden, unlabeled, and not intuitive to locate during an emergency.”

The investigation is separate from a probe the agency announced this fall into instances of electronic door handles on 2021 Tesla Model Y vehicles becoming inoperable from the outside.

The action follows a series of reporting from Bloomberg examining the role of Tesla’s door designs in accident fatalities. Tesla has previously said it is working on redesigns to its door handles.

Jon Keegan12/23/25

FCC bans new Chinese drones and components from DJI and Autel Robotics

Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) banned new drones and critical components from the market-leading Chinese drone manufacturer DJI, and smaller firm Autel Robotics, calling the foreign made drones “an unacceptable national security risk.”

The ban covers all drones and related components from any foreign manufacturer. DJI dominates the worldwide (nonmilitary) drone market, with a market share greater than 90%, according to some estimates.

In addition to hobbyists, the quadcopter-style drones made by DJI are used heavily by a wide variety of businesses including agriculture, infrastructure inspection, real estate, and also by first responders. Blocking foreign drones leaves many critical industries without a viable US-made alternative, as the industry has struggled to develop new supply chains that don’t come from China and match the quality of DJI’s hardware and software.

Shares of Florida-based drone builder Unusual Machines are up over 8% in early trading. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor and advisor to the company.

DJI has said its drones do not present a security risk, and welcome a national security review, noting that their drones can be used without an internet connection, and all data is saved locally.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr said:

“I welcome this Executive Branch national security determination, and I am pleased that the FCC has now added foreign drones and related components, which pose an unacceptable national security risk, to the FCC’s Covered List. Following President Trump’s leadership, the FCC will work closely with U.S. drone makers to unleash American drone dominance.”

U.S. Bans New China-Made Drones, Sparking Outrage Among Pilots

Shares of Florida-based drone builder Unusual Machines are up over 8% in early trading. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor and advisor to the company.

DJI has said its drones do not present a security risk, and welcome a national security review, noting that their drones can be used without an internet connection, and all data is saved locally.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr said:

“I welcome this Executive Branch national security determination, and I am pleased that the FCC has now added foreign drones and related components, which pose an unacceptable national security risk, to the FCC’s Covered List. Following President Trump’s leadership, the FCC will work closely with U.S. drone makers to unleash American drone dominance.”

Rani Molla12/23/25

Tesla’s EU sales fell nearly 40% in the first 11 months of 2025

From January through November this year, Tesla sales fell 39% to 129,000 in the European Union compared with the first 11 months of 2024, according to new data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, known as ACEA. In that same time, sales of Chinese competitor BYD grew 240% to 110,000. BYD first outsold Tesla there this spring, but Tesla is still outpacing BYD for the year.

Overall, sales of battery electric vehicles in the EU rose 28%.

Tesla has struggled throughout this year in Europe, its third-biggest market — something CEO Elon Musk has blamed on Europe’s lack of regulatory approval for its Full Self-Driving tech, though the decline likely has more to do with competition from China.

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