As far as data centers go, it’s a big one.
The Saline Township campus in Michigan, about 50 miles outside of Detroit, will have a capacity of more than 1 gigawatt. That’s huge. Most data centers have capacities between 100 and 300 megawatts.
And now the developer behind it, Related Digital, says it has secured the $16 billion needed to build it, with a little help from Blackstone and PIMCO.
The campus will span 250 acres to start, making it one of the largest in the United States. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last year called it the “largest investment in Michigan history.”
The Saline data center will help power Oracle’s AI business, which the company expects will generate some $90 billion in revenue by 2027.
It is part of the Stargate project, a $500 billion initiative led by Oracle, OpenAI, and SoftBank to build AI infrastructure across the country and to secure US supremacy in the race to develop artificial intelligence.
Despite all the hype, nearby Michigan residents have concerns about the project. Protesters who gathered in Saline in December told Michigan Public Radio that they’re worried about its impact on the electric grid and its potential to pollute the surrounding community.
“If it magically went away, I would be very happy because I could go back to my quiet life, and I don’t have to stand out here on the corner and yell that I don’t want it here,” Michigan resident Tammie Bruneau told Michigan Public Radio.
While companies like OpenAI argue that building new data centers will reindustrialize the US economy and create jobs, residents of towns where developers are proposing new data centers worry about their impact on power grids, water resources, pollution, and overall quality of life.
It is largely rural America that has become the go-to destination for tech giants racing to secure data capacity to fuel their AI ambitions.
In an investigation published last year, Business Insider identified 1,240 existing or planned data centers across the country as of 2024, the most definitive tally to date and a significant jump from the 311 that had permits in 2010. A sizable portion of those are or will be constructed in the Midwest.
In response to the growing concerns, tech leaders said in March that they would cover a greater share of data center energy costs during a visit to the White House. The developers behind the Saline project said it would use a “closed-loop cooling system” that would protect Michigan’s water.
That, however, has done little to ease worries among local residents.
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