OpenAI Will Press Ahead With US Data-Centre Expansion Despite Midterm Sweep, CFO Says

OpenAI chief financial officer Sarah Friar said the company will press ahead with its US data-centre expansion plans despite a Democratic midterm sweep and rising voter opposition to the facilities. "When I think about the midterms, I need to keep thinking about how do we keep investing to meet customer demand," Friar told CNBC in an interview on Friday, November 6. "We are going to keep building out those relationships with communities so we can get the compute we need," she said. (Cover photo is a file photo of a data centre.)

Voters rejected data centres 40 to 1 as stocks lost $2.5 trillion in a day

Opposition to data centres was a major issue in the midterms. CNBC, citing Ballotpedia, reported that voters backed restrictions or rejected pro-development proposals in 40 of 41 local data-centre ballot measures across 10 states. Democratic candidates, including Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, made tighter scrutiny of the facilities a central campaign pledge; Texas is one of the fastest-growing data-centre regions in the world. Fears that the Democratic sweep could slow construction of infrastructure critical to the AI boom wiped about $2.5 trillion off the US stock market on Thursday, with chip stocks recording their worst day since March 2020 and Nvidia falling about 9%.

No more non-disclosure deals with officials; fresh capital being raised

To ease community concerns, OpenAI on Thursday launched a "National Community Compact", pledging that it will no longer use non-disclosure agreements with public officials when negotiating or discussing future sites, and will take a more open approach to site discussions. Friar also said the company is raising fresh capital, pushing back against suggestions that it had scaled back its fundraising after the sharp AI stock selloff. Reuters reported on November 6 that OpenAI had closed an initial $11 billion of a new funding round at a $1.25 trillion valuation. Friar said the business grew 70% quarter over quarter in the third quarter, with enterprise demand doubling over the same period.

Google to spend $17 billion on Wyoming data centre

Rivals are also spending. Alphabet-owned Google said on Thursday it would invest $17 billion to build its first data centre in Wyoming, while Bloomberg reported that ByteDance is considering expanding a data-centre project in northeastern Brazil. Analysts say demand for computing power remains at the heart of the AI race, and political and community resistance is unlikely to change the expansion plans of the big builders in the short term — though site selection and approval processes may become longer and more public.