Detroit-headquartered contractor Wallbridge has broken ground on a $16bn, 1GW data centre called The Barn in Saline, Michigan developed by Related Digital for Oracle and Open AI.
The 250-acre campus will have three 550,000-sq-ft single-story data halls with 1.65 million sq ft of data centre space.
Closed-loop cooling systems will limit daily water use to levels comparable to a standard office building, which Wallbridge maintains will protect local water resources.
100% of power supplied will come from existing resources, augmented by a project-financed battery storage area.
The Barn is expected to create more than 2,500 union construction jobs, 450 permanent onsite jobs, 1,500 county-wide jobs and 1,000 indirect jobs.
It is the first data centre built under the memorandum of understanding between OpenAI and North America’s building trades unions.
The Barn forms part of a larger Stargate campus in Saline Township, a 4.5GW project between OpenAI and Oracle.
OpenAI says the sheer amount of infrastructure and manufacturing needed to advance AI will reindustrialise the US.
Clay Magouyrk, Oracle’s chief executive, said: “American-led AI will strengthen our economy, generate new jobs, bring back American manufacturing, and create a better future for generations to come.”
Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s building trades unions, said: “The demand for AI and data infrastructure is growing rapidly, and the Building Trades and our contractor partners have spent decades preparing the skilled workforce, training capacity, and industry partnerships needed to build this next generation of infrastructure safely, efficiently and at scale.”
Further Reading:
