OpenAI promised to give towns hosting its data centers more say, two days after midterm voters backed ballot measures to curb AI construction and elected governors in Texas, Georgia, and Ohio who had vowed to halt new data center permits, according to The New York Times. Under its National Community Compact, every future data center OpenAI owns and runs will get a separate agreement with its town and a yearly public report. OpenAI will also cover its full electricity bill and the cost of grid work to serve each site, and put up financial guarantees so residents and local businesses aren’t stuck paying for that grid work if a project gets canceled. But the pledges skip sites that partners like Oracle build and own, which supply a large share of OpenAI’s computing power.
