OpenAI announces changes how it handles data centres amid outcry after US midterms

Published Fri, Nov 6, 2026 · 02:12 PM

[SEATTLE] OpenAI said it will avoid non-disclosure agreements when it negotiates data centre deals and ensure residents do not pay for the electricity to power those projects.

This is part of a framework the company believes should be adopted into laws governing the expansion of artificial intelligence. The series of commitments was released on Thursday (Nov 5).

In a so-called National Community Compact, the company pledges to provide clear data about the potential community impacts of issues including noise, water and energy use.

OpenAI also promised to reduce power usage during peak times, send electricity back to the grid and set local hiring goals, assuming the local workforce allows for it. The AI lab will also publicly report on its progress towards keeping these commitments. 

“Households shouldn’t bear the costs of powering data centres,” OpenAI said in the policy document. “Instead, compute campus investment should help expand and modernise America’s energy grid, strengthen reliability, and deliver broader benefits to consumers.”

OpenAI said it had planned the announcement prior to the election returns and has been working on it for months.

It combines some measures the AI research lab has already announced in its data centre projects in areas such as Georgia and adds others that stem from conversations with residents and officials in Georgia, Ohio, Texas and other states, said OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane.

“Certainly a number of them are places that have been particularly impacted by the globalisation of the last 20, 30 years, and for a lot of really good reasons these folks have been really burned by companies and others in the past,” Lehane said. 

Voters across the US gave the data centre boom a clear thumbs down on Tuesday night. Gina Hinojosa, who was elected as the first Democratic governor in Texas in more than three decades, has called for an immediate moratorium on data centre development.

Other Democratic gubernatorial victories from Georgia to Ohio and Pennsylvania could leave half of proposed AI data centre additions across the US vulnerable to stricter local scrutiny and pushback.

At least 45 projects valued at US$68 billion were disrupted in some fashion by local opposition in the second quarter of 2026, according to Data Center Watch, a research group.

With data centres becoming increasingly politically unpopular, it is possible some OpenAI projects will be delayed, Lehane said. 

“The scale that we are building at there is just going to be a lot of types of things, questions at different levels, state level, local level, that you have to address,” he said. “People are certainly going to be mindful of how voters express themselves.” 

OpenAI has been speaking with candidates – incumbents and challengers – over the past few months to share many of its ideas about how to make data centres beneficial to residents, Lehane said, while declining to specify which candidates. 

“If you are going to go into a community and you are going to want to build in that community, you do have to do it with the community and get the community input,” Lehane said.

“The fact that people have expressed themselves at the ballot box in the way that they have, is an important message that people have to listen to and react to and respond to. This is how democracy is supposed to work.” BLOOMBERG