Oracle Corporation has issued a firm rebuttal to media accounts suggesting problems at its Abilene, Texas artificial intelligence data center. The company said the campus is progressing as planned, that two of its buildings are already in operation, and that it has completed leasing the extra 4.5 gigawatts of capacity it committed to OpenAI.
Oracle also emphasized that its development partner, Crusoe, is coordinating closely with the company to expedite delivery of the large-scale facility. A representative for Crusoe echoed that position, describing the collaboration as synchronized and focused on rapid deployment of massive-scale infrastructure.
The denial follows a March 6 report alleging that Oracle and OpenAI walked away from plans to expand the Abilene site. That report said prolonged financing talks and evolving needs at OpenAI were factors in reconsidering the expansion, and it suggested that Meta Platforms had expressed interest in leasing the planned expansion site from Crusoe, with Nvidia involved in facilitating negotiations and having placed a $150 million deposit. Oracle did not confirm those specific account details in its response.
In its statement, Oracle noted that two buildings on the Abilene campus are "completely operational" and that the remainder of the site is "on track." The company reiterated that it has "completed leasing for the additional 4.5GW to deliver on our commitments to OpenAI," but it did not provide a full breakdown of the geographic or facility-level allocation of that capacity beyond indicating the Abilene campus remains a central element of its rollout.
Oracle did not directly address earlier reports that some Abilene buildings experienced multi-day outages this year after winter weather affected liquid cooling equipment. The company also did not provide further public detail about where all of the leased 4.5 gigawatts of capacity is physically located.
The Abilene project was publicly revealed last year at the White House as part of the $500 billion Stargate AI initiative involving Oracle, OpenAI, and SoftBank. Initial plans called for increasing the site from an installed base of 1.2 gigawatts to roughly 2.0 gigawatts, and subsequent communications have referenced a broader commitment tied to OpenAI totaling an additional 4.5 gigawatts.
Market context
Investors reacted modestly to Oracle’s statement, with shares trading down 1.2% at $152.96 in pre-market trading amid wider market weakness. Oracle’s cloud infrastructure business has been a significant growth driver for the company. In its reporting for the period referenced, total cloud revenue grew 33% to $8 billion in Q2 2026, and cloud now accounts for roughly half of Oracle’s consolidated revenue. The firm also disclosed an additional $68 billion in remaining performance obligations tied to its cloud infrastructure business, a figure that market participants interpret as an indicator of ongoing AI-driven demand for cloud capacity and services.
Oracle is scheduled to release quarterly results on March 10. Market prediction tools referenced by traders show a 77.5% probability that the company will exceed consensus estimates for the quarter.
The announcement lands as competition for AI data center capacity heats up. The article referenced the recent fundraising by UK AI firm Nscale, backed by Nvidia, which secured $2 billion at a $14.6 billion valuation to expand capacity for clients including Microsoft and OpenAI. That activity highlights the broader market push among technology and infrastructure providers to secure scale for AI workloads.
What remains unclear
- Oracle did not disclose the precise locations of all leased capacity that make up the 4.5 gigawatts committed to OpenAI.
- The company did not explicitly confirm or deny earlier accounts of temporary reliability problems at Abilene related to winter weather and liquid cooling systems.