Reports suggesting that Oracle has cancelled its AI data centre project in Abilene, Texas, are inaccurate, the company said recently. Oracle clarified that work related to its infrastructure commitments with OpenAI is continuing and the project has not been scrapped.

The company said construction at the Abilene site is still moving ahead and some parts of the large campus are already up and running.

In a post on X, Oracle explained that it is working closely with data centre developer Crusoe to build a massive AI data centre campus in Abilene. According to the company, two buildings at the site are already operational, while work on the remaining facilities is progressing.

Oracle said the operational buildings are already supporting workloads through its cloud platform for OpenAI’s AI systems. The company added that both teams are working together to deliver the project quickly.

The firm also said it has secured more computing capacity to meet its commitments to OpenAI. Oracle noted that it has completed leasing arrangements for an additional 4.5 gigawatts of capacity. It added that the company continues to explore new locations globally to support growing demand for its OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) services.

The clarification comes after a report last week suggested that Oracle and OpenAI had dropped plans to expand the Abilene campus due to financing discussions and changing infrastructure needs. Oracle has now dismissed those claims.

The Abilene project is part of the broader Stargate AI infrastructure initiative, an ambitious effort backed by OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and investment firm MGX. The programme aims to invest as much as $500 billion to build large AI data centres across the United States.

Once finished, the Abilene campus is expected to include eight data centre buildings with a total power capacity of around 1.2 gigawatts. Two of those buildings are already running and are currently being used by Oracle’s cloud infrastructure to handle OpenAI-related workloads.

The need for large-scale data centres has grown rapidly as companies build the infrastructure required to run generative AI models and services, including platforms such as ChatGPT and other enterprise AI tools.

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