OpenAI Launches Product-Specific Ads on ChatGPT

OpenAI is in advanced negotiations to lease a 10 gigawatt data center campus on federal land in Ohio, with potential financial backing from Nvidia. The facility would be among the largest of its kind, with a total build-out cost of at least $500 billion at current prices for chips, labor, power, and materials. OpenAI would control equipment under a long-term lease and assume payment obligations once operations begin, with the first phase expected in 2028.

OpenAI has launched the Economic Research Exchange, a platform designed to study artificial intelligence's effects on employment, productivity, and broader economic outcomes. The initiative opens applications for selected research projects that will examine AI's economic impact. The program represents a structured effort to generate empirical evidence on how AI deployment affects labor markets and economic performance.

Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, discussed the company's restructured approach to AI development in a podcast interview. Microsoft signed a new contract with OpenAI in October that allows the company to pursue superintelligence independently while continuing to license OpenAI models. Suleyman has assembled a dedicated superintelligence team and built infrastructure to train frontier models, announcing seven new models across multiple modalities at Microsoft Build.

Crusoe Energy, the data center developer building OpenAI's Stargate supercomputer facility in Abilene, Texas, is facing higher-than-expected costs and technical challenges integrating natural gas turbines with the AI infrastructure. Engineers have been working overtime to resolve compatibility issues between the power generation system and one of the most expensive AI supercomputers ever built. The project, part of OpenAI's broader Stargate computing initiative, is encountering obstacles that were not anticipated during initial planning.