Meta (or Microsoft) Steals a Stargate

"I'm here in case you succeed."

That's what Colonel Jack O'Neill (Kurt Russell) tells Dr. Catherine Langford (Viveca Lindfors) when she asks why he's a part of the 'Stargate' mission in the 1994 film of the same name. The implication, of course, is that in the unlikely event that the Stargate works, and opens a portal to another world, he's the fall-back option in case something goes wrong.

Well, the stakes are lower, but the tech project named after the movie – the massive AI data center build-out spearheaded by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank – is no less complicated. Case in point: the many fits and starts of the real life initiative. And the latest twist and turn perhaps points to a very fundamental challenge of the project – and the broader data center build-outs in general.

The latest news dropped last week. Last Thursday, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI was backing out of a planned expansion of a data center project in Abilene, Texas. If you've heard of Abilene in recent months it's likely one of two things: either you've been listening to a lot of Ella Langley, or you've been following the aforementioned 'Stargate' project – that's the location of the first such site...