Microsoft Takes Over OpenAI's Texas Data Center: 900 MW AI Factory in Abilene

Microsoft is taking over a massive data center project in Abilene, Texas, after OpenAI decided not to proceed with the expansion. Multiple US media outlets reported the development on March 27, 2026.

The project includes two new "AI factory" buildings and a dedicated power plant with 900 megawatts of capacity, making it one of the largest dedicated AI infrastructure projects in the United States.

The takeover is a natural consequence of the strategic cloud relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI, following Amazon's competing $50 billion deal with OpenAI to run on AWS infrastructure. Microsoft's Texas move secures compute capacity independent of its OpenAI partnership dynamics.

Meanwhile, US Senators Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have introduced legislation to impose a moratorium on new data centers in the US, demanding national safety and environmental standards before further construction proceeds.

For enterprise technology leaders, this signals that AI infrastructure is consolidating around hyperscalers — and that access to compute will become a strategic differentiator in the years ahead.