OpenAI published a policy blueprint and a series of commitments on November 5 pledging to change how it negotiates and operates data centers it owns, two days after voters delivered a broad rebuke of AI infrastructure expansion in the midterm elections3,4.
The commitments cover company-owned and -operated facilities and include soliciting community input, publishing construction plans, protecting ratepayers from bearing electricity costs, and avoiding non-disclosure agreements with public officials. OpenAI also reaffirmed its promise to pay the full cost of powering its data centers.
The political trigger
The pledges follow a midterm cycle in which data center opposition became a galvanizing issue. Americans are now more likely to oppose candidates who are pro-data center construction, a reversal from ten months earlier, according to a Politico poll conducted by PF Global2. Roughly two-thirds of Democrats and about half of Republicans said they would be "not too or not at all comfortable with a new local data center," according to a Pew Research Center survey. Between March and August, the number of planned and operating data center projects nearly tripled.
Alex Brown, a reporter covering energy infrastructure for Stateline, said the pace of construction and the number of communities facing the same questions simultaneously were new, and that voters "were inspired by seeing pushback in another community".
OpenAI's framing
"What we're doing with this blueprint is really laying out the best lessons that we have learned and committing to applying them as they go forward," OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane told reporters during a briefing on November 4. "This will help ensure that there is a very high floor in terms of how people move forward". Lehane said the policy blueprint had been in the works since August. In the blueprint, OpenAI encouraged policymakers to enact similar commitments as laws.
OpenAI has announced data center projects in Georgia and Ohio. The company told investors in February that it is targeting $600 billion in total compute spend by 2030.
ANALYSIS The commitments apply only to data centers OpenAI owns and operates, leaving open how the company will handle facilities built or run by partners. With a $600 billion compute-spend target through 2030, the volume of future siting decisions is large enough that the scope limitation could matter as much as the pledges themselves.