This Meta alum has spent 10 months leading OpenAI’s nationwide hunt for its Stargate data centers
Keith Heyde stands on site in Abilene, Texas, where OpenAI’s Stargate infrastructure buildout is underway. Heyde, a former head of AI compute at Meta, is now leading OpenAI’s physical expansion push.
OpenAI
It wasn’t how Keith Heyde envisioned celebrating the holidays. Rather than hanging out with his wife back home in Oregon, Heyde spent late December visiting potential data center sites across the U.S.
Two months earlier, Heyde left Meta to join OpenAI as the head of infrastructure. His job was to turn CEO Sam Altman’s ambitious compute dreams into reality, seeking out vast swaths of land suitable for expansive facilities that will eventually be packed with powerful graphics processing units for building large language models.
“My in-between Christmas and New Year’s last year was actually mostly spent looking at sites,” Heyde, 36, told CNBC in an interview. “So my family loved that, trust me.”
His life in 2025 has only gotten more intense.
Since January, OpenAI has been quietly soliciting and reviewing proposals from around 800 applicants hoping to host the next wave of its Stargate data centers, AI supercomputing hubs designed to train increasingly powerful models.
Roughly 20 sites are now in advanced stages of diligence, with massive tracts of land under review across the Southwest, Midwest and Southeast. Heyde said tax incentives are “a relatively small part of the decision matrix.”
The most important factors are access to power, ability to scale, and buy-in from local communities.
“Can we build quickly, is the power ramp there fast, and is this something where it makes sense from a community perspective?” he said.
Heyde leads site development within OpenAI’s industrial compute team, a division that’s swiftly become one of the most important groups inside the company. Infrastructure, once a supporting function, has now been elevated to a strategic pillar on par with product and model development.
With traditional data centers nearly at max capacity, OpenAI is betting that owning the next generation of physical infrastructure is central to controlling the future of AI.
The energy needs are hard to fathom. A gigawatt data center requires the amount of power needed for some entire cities. Late last month, OpenAI announced plans for a 17-gigawatt buildout in partnership with Oracle, Nvidia, and SoftBank.
New sites will have to include all sorts of energy options, including battery-backed solar installations, legacy gas turbine refurbishments and even small modular nuclear reactors, Heyde said. Each site looks different, but together they form the industrial backbone OpenAI needs to scale.
“We’ve done this wonderful piece of bottleneck analysis to see what types of energy sources actually allow us to unlock the journey that we want to be on,” Heyde said.
A good chunk of the capital is coming from Nvidia. The chipmaker agreed to invest up to $100 billion to fuel OpenAI’s expansion, which will involve purchasing millions of Nvidia’s GPUs.
‘Perfect wasn’t the goal’
Heyde, a former head of AI compute at Meta, helped oversee the buildout of Meta’s first 100,000 GPU cluster.
In addition to power, OpenAI is assessing how quickly it can build on a site, the availability of labor and proximity to supportive local governments, according to Stargate’s request for proposal.
Heyde said the team has made around 100 site visits and has a short list of sites in late-stage review. Some will be brand new builds, and others will require conversions and refurbishments of existing facilities. Flexibility will be key.
“The perfect parcels are largely taken,” Heyde said. “But we knew that perfect wasn’t the goal — the goal for us was, number one, a compelling power ramp.”
Competition is fierce.
Meta is building what may be the largest data center in the Western Hemisphere — a $10 billion project in Northeast Louisiana, fueled by billions in state incentives. CEO Mark Zuckerberg raised the top end of the company’s annual capital expenditure spending range to $72 billion in July.
The steel frame of data centers under construction during a tour of the OpenAI data center in Abilene, Texas, U.S., Sept. 23, 2025.
Shelby Tauber | Reuters
Amazon and Anthropic are teaming up on a 1,200-acre AI campus in Indiana. And across the country, states are rolling out tax breaks, power guarantees, and expedited zoning approvals to attract the next big AI cluster.
OpenAI is a relative upstart, having been around for just a decade and only known to the mainstream since launching ChatGPT less than three years ago. But it’s raised mounds of cash from the likes of Microsoft and SoftBank, in addition to Nvidia, on its way to a $500 billion valuation.
And OpenAI is showing it’s not afraid to lead the way in AI. A self-built solar campus in Abiliene, Texas, is already live.
While OpenAI still leans on partners like Oracle, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told CNBC last week in Abilene that owning first-party infrastructure provides a differentiated approach. It curbs vendor markups, safeguards key intellectual property, and follows the same strategic logic that once drove Amazon to build Amazon Web Services rather than rely on existing infrastructure.
However, Heyde indicated that there’s no real playbook when it comes to AI, particularly as companies pursue artificial general intelligence (AGI), or AI that can potentially meet or exceed human capabilities.
“It’s a very different order of magnitude when we think about the type of delivery that has to happen at those locations,” he said.
Some applicants, including former bitcoin mining operators, offered existing power infrastructure, like substations and modular buildouts, but Heyde said those don’t always fit.
“Sometimes we found that it’s almost nice to be the first interaction in a community,” he said. “It’s a very nice narrative that we’re bringing the data center and the infrastructure there on behalf of OpenAI.”
The 20 finalist sites represent phase one of a much larger buildout. OpenAI ultimately plans to scale from single-gigawatt projects to massive campuses.
“Any place or any site we’re moving forward with, we’ve really considered the viability and our own belief that we can deliver the power story and the infrastructure story associated with those sites,” Heyde said.
He understands why many people are skeptical.
“It’s hard. There’s no doubt about it,” Heyde said. “The numbers we’re talking about are very challenging, but it’s certainly possible.”
WATCH: OpenAI’s $850 billion buildout contends with grid limits
Kia officially opened its first production hub dedicated to building electric vans. Once fully operational, Kia’s Hwaseong EVO Plant will be about the size of 42 soccer fields.
Kia opens new production hub for PBV electric vans
The dedicated production facility was first announced in 2022 as part of Kia’s new Platform Beyond Vehicle (PBV) business strategy.
Kia’s PBV plant is a cornerstone of its plans to become a leader in the light commercial electric van market by 2030.
On Friday, Kia took a big step by opening the first phase of its production hub. Kia announced on November 14 that it has now officially completed the Hwaseong EVO Plant East portion and broke ground on the EVO Plant West site.
A completion ceremony was held at Kia’s Autoland Hwaseong plant, attended by around 200 guests, including South Korean Prime Minister Kim Min-seok and Hyundai Motor Executive Chairman Euisun Chung.
The new EVO Plant East is a 98,433 square-meter site with an annual production capacity of 100,000 units. Kia will build the PV5, its first electric van, including the Passenger, Cargo, Chassis Cab, and Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle (WAV) models.
The EVO Plant West spans 136,671 square meters and will add 150,000 units of Kia’s upcoming larger PBV vans, including the PV7.
Kia also operates a dedicated PBV conversion center, where it builds custom models based on the PV5, including open-bed trucks, camper vans, and box vehicles.
Combined, the entire PBV Production hub will have an annual capacity of 250,000 units, spanning over 303,750 square meters, or about the size of 42 soccer fields.
Kia is already delivering the PV5 Passenger and Cargo variants in South Korea and Europe, with plans to continue rolling it out to new markets over the next few months.
Last month, the PV5 Cargo set a new Guinness World Record for the greatest distance travelled by a light-duty battery-powered electric van with maximum payload.
In Europe, the PV5 Passenger is available with two battery packs: 51.5 kWh and 71.2 kWh, delivering WLTP ranges of 183 miles and 256 miles, respectively. The Cargo variant has the same battery pack options, but is rated with WLTP ranges of 184 miles and 258 miles.
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Black Friday and Cyber Monday just got a whole lot more electrifying, thanks to isinwheel. The urban mobility brand known for its powerful electric bikes, electric scooters, and electric skateboards is kicking off its biggest sale of the year from November 14 through December 1. True to its motto – Move Smart, Move Fun – isinwheel blends intelligent tech with pure riding joy, and now you can snag your dream ride for a whole lot less.
During the BFCM event, in addition to generous markdowns, shoppers can stack savings like never before: get an extra 10% off when you buy two items, plus up to $100 in additional discounts on bigger orders ($30 off $500, $50 off $1,000, and $100 off $1,500). Members will earn 5X points that can be redeemed for accessories, and Electrek readers get something special: use promo code electrek50 for an exclusive $50 off any isinwheel product.
Time to ride smarter, faster, and more fun this holiday season – check out the deals below.
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isinwheel GT4 2400W Dual Motor Off-Road Electric Scooter
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Hyundai and Kia scored a win on Friday after the South Korean government pledged to boost EV subsidies by 20%.
Hyundai and Kia get a lift with government EV support
Hyundai Motor, including Kia and Genesis, is going all-in on the US market, pledging to ramp up local production and introduce a range of new electrified vehicles.
Like many others, the new 25% tariffs for exports to the US have already taken a toll on the South Korean auto giant. Hyundai said it took about 1.8 trillion won ($1.2 billion) in tariffs-related losses in the third quarter. Kia reported a 1.2 trillion won ($830 million) hit.
To help it overcome the extra costs, the South Korean government said it will increase EV subsidies by 20% next year.
The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Friday (via Reuters) plans to raise EV subsidies by 20%, from 780 billion won ($540 million) this year to 936 billion won ($645 million) in 2026.
South Korea also committed over 15 trillion won ($10.3 billion) in financial support for domestic auto parts and car makers in 2026, including low-interest-rate loans and guarantees.
The government is ramping up investments in next-generation vehicles, aiming to produce fully autonomous cars domestically by 2028. South Korea is dedicating an extra 50 billion won, on top of the 150 trillion won in funding, to advance the new tech. It’s also looking to incentivize automakers to reach specific targets, such as five-minute fast charging, a 1,500 km (932 miles) driving range, and prices on par with gas vehicles by 2030.
Separately, the US and South Korea agreed to lower tariffs on imported goods, including vehicles from 25% to 15%. The lower rate puts South Korean automakers like Hyundai and Kia on par with Japanese brands. Japan reached a similar deal with the US in September.
Despite the tariffs, Hyundai and Kia both set new third-quarter sales records in the US. Combined, they sold over 480,000 vehicles, an increase of 12% compared to Q3 2024.
To offset the loss of the $7,500 federal tax credit, Hyundai and Kia are offering some of the most significant discounts on EVs in the US.
Earlier this month, Kia introduced a new $10,000 customer cash discount across its entire lineup. The Hyundai IONIQ 5 remains one of the most affordable EVs in the US, with leases starting as low as $189 per month.
Interested in a test drive? We can help you get started. Check out our links below to find Hyundai and Kia EVs near you.
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