Openai Stargate Center Center Infrastructure Lead Keith Heyde

Not so Keith Hede envisages the celebration of the holidays. Instead of hanging out with his wife at home in Oregon, Hede spent the end of December visiting potential US Data Center sites

Two months earlier Hede left Meta To join Openai as a head of infrastructure. His job was to turn the CEO Sam Altman Ambitious combined dreams in reality, looking for huge layers of land suitable for expansive facilities, which will eventually be filled with powerful graphic processing units for the construction of large language models.

“Mine between Christmas and New Year last year was actually spent mostly in site viewing,” Hede’s 36-year-old told CNBC in an interview. “So my family loved this, believe me.”

His life in 2025 became only more intensive.

Since January, Openai has quietly wants and reviews suggestions from about 800 candidates who are hoping to host the next wave of their Stargate data centers, AI Supercompulsant Centers designed to train increasingly powerful models.

Approximately 20 sites are already in advanced stages of diligence, with massive sections of land throughout the southwest, Midwest and southeast. Hede said tax incentives were “a relatively small part of the decision -making matrix.”

The most important factors are access to power, the ability to scale and buy from local communities.

“Can we build fast, is the power ramp fast there and is this something where it makes sense from a community perspective?” he said.

Heyde manages the development of the site within the framework of the OpenAi Industrial Compute team, a division that is quickly becoming one of the most important groups in the company. The infrastructure, once a maintenance function, is now elevated to a strategic pillar along with the development of products and model.

With traditional data centers with almost maximum capacity, Openai relies that possession of the next generation of physical infrastructure is central to control the future of AI.

Thehe energy needs It is difficult to understand. Gigawatt data center requires the amount of power required for some entire cities. At the end of last month, Openai has announced plans for a 17-gigant building in partnership with Oracle., Nvidiaand SoftbankS

New sites will need to include all kinds of energy options, including battery -backed solar installations, hereditary gas turbine renewal and even small modular nuclear reactors, Hede said. Each site looks different, but together they form the industrial spine that Openai should scathing.

“We made this wonderful piece of Butteneck analysis to see what types of energy sources actually allow us to unlock the trip we want to be,” Hede said.

A good part of the capital comes from NVIDIA. Chipmaker agreed To invest up to $ 100 billion to power Openai, which will include the purchase of millions of NVIDIA graphics processors.

Hede, former AI Compute leader in MetaHelped monitor the construction of the first 100,000 GPU cluster of Meta.

In addition to the authorities, Openai evaluates how quickly it can upgrade on the spot, the presence of labor and close to supporting local authorities, according to Stargate’s request for a proposal.

Hede said the team made about 100 visits to the site and has a short list of sites at a late stage. Some will be brand new buildings and others will require the realization and renovation of existing facilities. Flexibility will be key.

“Perfect plots are accepted to a large extent,” Hede said. “But we knew that the perfect was not the goal – the goal for us was, number one, captivating power of power.”

The competition is fierce.

Meta builds what it can be The largest data center in the Western Hemisphere – A $ 10 billion project in northeastern Louisiana, fueled by billions in state stimuli. CEO Mark Zuckerberg Raised the upper end of the company’s annual costs of the company to $ 72 billion JulyS

Amazon And the anthropic ones are combined into a campus of 1200 acres AI in Indiana. And throughout the country, countries are deploying tax breaks, power guarantees and accelerated zoning approvals to attract the next large AI cluster.

Openai is a relative start, being only a decade and is known only to the main flow of Chatgpt release less than three years ago. But it has raised a mound of money from the likes of Microsoft and softbank, in addition to Nvidia, on the way to a $ 500 billion estimatedS

And Openai shows that he is not afraid to lead the road to AI. Self -built sun campus in Abilien, Texas, is already live.

While Openai still bends to partners as OracleOpenai Chief Financial Officer Sarah Frier told CNBC last week in Abilene that possession of first -country infrastructure provides a differentiated approach. It restricts suppliers’ markings, protects the key intellectual property and follows the same strategic logic that once caused Amazon to build Amazon Web Services, not relying on existing infrastructure.

Heyde, however, pointed out that there is no real playing book when it comes to AI, especially since companies pursue artificial general intelligence (AGI) or AI that can potentially meet or exceed human capabilities.

“This is a very different order when we think about the type of delivery that needs to happen in these places,” he said.

Some candidates including ex Bitcoin The mining operators offered existing electricity infrastructure, such as substations and modular buildings, but Hede said that these were not always fit.

“Sometimes we found that it was almost nice to be the first interaction in a community,” he said. “A very nice story is that we carry the data center and infrastructure there on behalf of Openai.”

The 20 websites of the finalists represent phase first of a much more construction. Openai eventually plans to scale from one gigant projects to massive campuses.

“Every place or every site we are moving forward, we have really looked at our viability and our own belief that we can convey the history of power and the history of infrastructure related to these sites,” Hede said.

He understands why many people are skeptical.

“It’s hard. There’s no doubt about it,” Hede said. “The numbers we are talking about are very challenging, but it is certainly possible.”

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