Microsoft (MSFT) is apparently discussing leasing out segments of an uncompleted data center site in Abilene, Texas, according to The Information.
This is in addition to Meta Platforms (META), which was implicated in a report last week as also wanting to lease some of the planned expansion after Oracle (ORCL) and OpenAI (OPENAI) decided not to expand from 1.2 GW to 2 GW.
The site in question is one of the flagship centers of the Stargate Project. Construction continues on the 1,000-acre development, and both Oracle and OpenAI are continuing to utilize the Stargate site. The data center is being developed by Crusoe, which develops data centers utilizing renewable energy and stranded natural gas.
Microsoft is now engaged in advanced talks to lease hundreds of megawatts of data center capacity from the site, the report said. Oracle currently leases out eight buildings at the site for use by OpenAI. Microsoft could use the planned extra capacity to expand its Azure cloud business or rent out cloud servers to OpenAI. Completion of the site will likely require tens of billions of dollars, including the Nvidia (NVDA) GPUs needed to provide the AI computing power.