How will OpenAI’s $30B Oracle deal affect its sustainability commitments?

News came overnight of OpenAI’s $30 billion-per-year deal with Oracle to lease 4.5GW of data centre capacity across the US.  

To put that capacity into perspective, a report by Bloomberg suggests that 4.5GW is equivalent to the output of more than four nuclear reactors and is enough to power 3 million homes. 

OpenAI says the deal, one of the biggest AI cloud agreements to date, is necessary to expand its ability to create powerful AI models and meet increasing demand for ChatGPT and its other products. 

But what about sustainability? 

OpenAI’s mission is to “ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity” and its existing Microsoft Azure cloud agreement is backed by Microsoft’s commitment to becoming water positive by 2030. 

But what of this new deal? OpenAI and Oracle make positive net-zero commitments in their sustainability reports, however neither seems to publicise strong commitments around reducing water consumption. 

Oracle states it will build multiple data centres across the states to meet its capacity deal with OpenAI, and specifically says it will expand a centre in Abilene, Texas from 1.2GW to 2GW as part of this growth. According to figures, a data centre with 2GW capacity uses approximately 40 million litres of water each day – that’s 40 million litres that will be unavailable to households, farmers and other industries in central West Texas, an area that is already suffering from water scarcity issues. 

Abilene residents apparently already live under water restrictions. Through education the city has seen individual water usage drop since the 1990s, but all that positive work could be reversed if the data centre consumes vast amounts of water once opened - the city has to decide between tech investment and other industries. 

OpenAI’s Oracle deal is certainly a landmark moment, but as the AI industry scales, we must ask: can we build the future of artificial intelligence without compromising the planet?