OpenAI is scouring the U.S. for sites to build a network of huge data centers to power its artificial intelligence technology, expanding beyond a flagship Texas location and looking across 16 states to accelerate the Stargate project championed by President Donald Trump.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI said on Thursday that Texas will be the "flagship" data center site in the Stargate project it is building with SoftBank .

Stargate, a joint venture between ChatGPT creator OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank, plans to invest up to $500 billion to help the United States stay ahead of China and other competitors in the global AI race.

OpenAI announced this week its AI research assistant, which it calls “ deep research .” Powered by OpenAI’s o3-mini model (which was trained to use trial and error to find answers to complex questions), deep research is one of OpenAI’s first attempts at a real “agent” that’s capable of following instructions and working on its own.

OpenAI's Operator promises to abolish browser-based drudgery, here's everything you need to know about the AI agent and when you'll be able to try it for yourself.

Tech giant OpenAI has unveiled a pay-for-access tool called ‘deep research’, which synthesizes information from dozens or hundreds of websites into a cited report several pages long. The tool follows a similar one from Google released in December and acts as a personal assistant, doing the equivalent of hours of work in tens of minutes.

OpenAI is showing no signs of slowing down its recent pace of updates. On Wednesday, the company announced the expanded availability of ChatGPT Search. After rolling out the tool first to paid subscribers last fall,