Tech giants announce $7B data center, Michigan's first hyperscale campus (apnews.com)

OpenAI, Oracle and Related Digital announced they will build Michigan’s first hyperscale data center campus under their Stargate joint venture: a more-than-1‑gigawatt, $7B project on 250 acres in Saline Township with three 550,000 sq ft buildings. DTE Energy has agreed to supply roughly 1.4 GW of power (a ~25% increase in DTE demand) and developers will fund a $2B battery facility; construction is slated to begin in 2026. The campus will use closed‑loop server cooling (company claim: water use comparable to an office building), include groundwater monitoring and is eligible for recent state tax breaks plus a likely 12‑year local tax abatement. Developers say the site will create ~450 onsite jobs and anchor Michigan’s AI infrastructure strategy. For the AI/ML community the announcement signals a major expansion of U.S. compute capacity—more local hyperscale availability for training and inference workloads and regional diversification of AI infrastructure. Key technical and policy implications include heavy, sustained power demand that is driving utilities to negotiate multi‑GW deals and to plan battery and gas capacity (with carbon capture in long‑term plans), tighter contractual terms (15‑year power commitments, exit fees) to protect ratepayers, and environmental scrutiny over grid impacts and fossil generation. The project also exposes tensions between economic development incentives and community, water, and climate concerns that could shape how future AI data centers are sited and powered.