In Abilene, Texas—in the heart of what locals call the Big Country, long defined by ranching, farming, shale oil exploration, and now dotted with wind turbines—OpenAI and Oracle staged a carefully crafted media showcase on Tuesday to talk about the latest boom underway. Throngs of journalists from across the country were escorted by police to a half-completed 800-acre data center complex, guided through halls packed with tens of thousands of state-of-the-art Nvidia GPUs, and greeted by the company CEOs and by policymakers including Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
The event was a victory lap of sorts, as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle’s new co-CEO Clay Magouryk pushed back against critics who have questioned the progress of their high-profile and ambitious “Stargate” AI infrastructure project.
