Oracle has revised delivery schedules for several large AI data centers it is building for OpenAI from 2027 to 2028, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The delayed facilities are parts of Oracle's commitments under the Stargate AI infrastructure program jointly announced in January by Oracle, OpenAI, and SoftBank
Bloomberg's sources familiar with the projects reportedly blame shortages of skilled labor and 'materials' for the setback, though it is unclear whether by 'materials' they mean building materials, shortages of data center equipment, or shortages of materials for building out infrastructure surrounding AI data centers. Despite the delay from 2027 to 2028, the overall scope of the projects that Oracle will build for OpenAI remains unchanged, the report says.
The delayed facilities are part of a contract between Oracle and OpenAI inked in July, under which the two parties plan to increase Stargate AI data center capacity to two million AI accelerators and 5 GW of power. Despite the revised timelines, the U.S.-based AI campuses are still planned on an unusually aggressive scale, and some of them are designed to rank among the largest data centers globally once completed. In fact, given the scope of the projects, delays and slipups are inevitable.
Earlier this week, Clay Magouyurk, chief executive of Oracle, said that despite obvious bottlenecks, Oracle believes its global expansion plans were realistic. He pointed to 147 active regions, 64 more in development, and roughly 400 MW of data center capacity delivered in one quarter. One of the examples of how Oracle can manage building out a large data center is its SuperCluster in Abilene, Texas, which houses nearly 200,000 Nvidia GPUs, and which was built in several months.
"Our SuperCluster in Abilene, Texas, is on track with more than 96,000 Nvidia Grace Blackwell GB200 delivered," Magouyurk told analysts and investors. "We also began delivering AMD MI355 capacity to customers this quarter."
The head of Oracle also stressed that the company continues to see strong demand for AI capacity, but emphasized that the company only accepts orders if it feels confident that it can fulfill them.
"Our pace of capacity delivery continues to accelerate," said Magouyurk. "We continue to see strong demand for AI infrastructure across training and inferencing. We follow a very rigorous process before accepting customer contracts. This process ensures that we have all the necessary ingredients to deliver to customer success at margins that make sense for our business."
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