Data Center Moratorium Vote: OpenAI's 618 MW in Abilene Is the Only Lab Capacity Clear in Texas
Three states just elected governors who want a data center moratorium, and in Texas the frontier labs have one campus that is already plugged in.
Texas, Georgia and Ohio just elected governors who want to pause new data centers. Of the frontier labs' big Texas campuses, one is running and the rest are stuck behind a grid pause and a permit freeze the state imposed in August and September.
Texas elected Gina Hinojosa governor on Tuesday, and she ran on a promise to issue a moratorium on all data center approvals until the Legislature writes new rules. Georgia elected Keisha Lance Bottoms, who wants a temporary statewide pause on new data center construction. Ohio elected Amy Acton, who wants a conditional moratorium on new data centers unless developers pay their own utility costs and hire union crews. Add up Wells Fargo's state figures and those three states hold 39% of the data center capacity planned in the US.
A data center moratorium on new campuses makes the ones already plugged in scarcer, and in Texas the frontier labs have exactly one of those. OpenAI has taken delivery of 618 MW at Stargate Abilene. Its other Texas sites, and the campus Anthropic is expected to anchor, are stuck behind a gate that closed weeks before anyone voted.
Texas's data center pause started in August
The pause is older than the election. On August 3, Greg Abbott ordered an audit of every data center in the state's grid connection line. ERCOT (the operator that runs most of the Texas grid) then paused approvals to energize any data center of 75 MW or more that isn't connected yet. Energizing is the step where the utility actually turns the power on, so a finished building without it sits dark.
On September 21 Abbott went further and told TCEQ, the state environmental agency, to stop issuing "all permits related to data center projects." That covers the air permits for gas plants that campuses build on their own land, which is how Shackelford and Hubbard planned to skip the grid line entirely.
ERCOT's audit reports are due to the state's utility commission by December 10. Hinojosa takes office on January 19. (So the Republican who started the pause lost, and the Democrat who inherits it wants it to last until new laws pass.)
Where the frontier labs' Texas campuses stand
Stargate Abilene is through. Crusoe developed it, Oracle leases it, and OpenAI rents the computing from Oracle. By Oracle's September earnings, The Next Platform reported, OpenAI had taken 618 MW, about three quarters of what Oracle is putting into Abilene. ERCOT's pause only applies to loads that aren't connected yet, and Abilene's 618 MW are connected.
Stargate Shackelford is Vantage Data Centers' 1.4 GW Frontier campus, and it's designed to run off the grid on gas from VoltaGrid (a private company that builds on-site power plants for data centers). Its major-source air permit for the power plant only got a preliminary decision notice on September 22, the day after the permit freeze. So the plant the Stargate halls in Shackelford are counting on is in the same queue as everyone else's. (Oracle and OpenAI are the names attached to the campus in the Stargate announcements.)
Nexus Hubbard, in Hill County, is the campus where Bloomberg reported Anthropic is expected to be the anchor tenant. It's a behind-the-meter build, which means the gas plant sits on site and feeds the halls directly. W.Media puts it at up to 600 MW, with the first building due in October 2027. Its air permit notice went out on September 22 too, while the Texas Tribune reported construction at the Hill County site was "moving right along." The concrete can keep going up, but the turbines can't run without that permit.
Stargate Milam is SB Energy's 1.2 GW site for OpenAI, powered by new solar and batteries. SB Energy hasn't said it's energized, and every large load that isn't sits behind the ERCOT audit.
Then there's the Abilene expansion OpenAI walked away from. Bloomberg reported in March that Microsoft would rent the Texas site Oracle and OpenAI dropped, and Crusoe's plan has two 336 MW buildings for Microsoft with the first energized in mid-2027. That first power date lands after Hinojosa takes office, and after the Legislature has had its first shot at new rules.
Energized data center capacity in Texas is the scarce asset
Data center space was tight before the vote. CBRE put vacancy in the main North American markets at 1.4% in the first half of 2026. More than 80% of what was under construction had already been leased before it was finished. A pause on new energizations pulls supply out of a market that had almost none to begin with.
Investors priced that the morning after (the market is quicker than ERCOT). Microsoft rose 6.7% on Wednesday, while Vertiv, Modine and Sterling all fell by double digits. Art Hogan of B. Riley Wealth told Reuters the hyperscalers already have data centers, "so those assets are more valuable now." The same logic holds a level down, for the cloud company sitting on the one lab campus in Texas that's already running.
Oracle books the revenue from Abilene's delivered capacity
$ORCL is the public company that comes out ahead. Oracle leases Abilene from the group Crusoe built it with, Blue Owl and Primary Digital Infrastructure, and sells the computing to OpenAI as cloud capacity, so every building OpenAI has already taken is capacity Oracle can bill today. That billing lands in Oracle's cloud infrastructure line, which brought in $7.4B last quarter.
Crusoe is private, and its Abilene income comes from halls that are already running. Vantage, Nexus and VoltaGrid are private too, and they're the ones paying interest while they wait (construction loans don't pause for audits). For OpenAI and Anthropic, every month Shackelford, Milam and Hubbard sit behind the audit is a month their Texas compute comes from Abilene and nowhere else.
December 10 decides whether any of those three get through before January 19. If they don't, Abilene's 618 MW is all the frontier labs get in Texas until the Legislature that convenes on January 12 writes new rules.