Project dossier · Doña Ana County, New Mexico

OpenAI Stargate Doña Ana County Under construction

Part of Stargate. GW-scale data center campus in Doña Ana County, New Mexico.

Key facts

Operator: Oracle
Owner: SoftBank
Tenant: OpenAI
Location: Doña Ana County, New Mexico
Stage today: Under construction

What to do next

Next step: Under construction — pull the approved conditions and permits and hold the builder to them; an expansion or a new building reopens the record.

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What has happened so far (17 events)

2025-01-21announcement
OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle announce the $500 billion Stargate joint venture to build massive U.S. AI data center infrastructure. · source
2025-02-01announcement
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and BorderPlex Digital Assets Chairman Lanham Napier jointly announce plans for a large digital infrastructure campus in Santa Teresa, Dona Ana County. · source
2025-05-01utility
Dona Ana Board of County Commissioners votes to terminate the joint powers agreement that created the Camino Real Regional Utility Authority, affecting local water/utility governance ahead of the data center buildout. · source
2025-09-01construction
Construction begins on the Project Jupiter data center campus along NM-136 near the Santa Teresa Port of Entry in Dona Ana County. · source
2025-09-19vote
Dona Ana County commissioners approve an unprecedented $165 billion industrial revenue bond to help finance Project Jupiter; the vote draws protests outside the County Government Center in Las Cruces. · source
2025-09-23announcement
Project Jupiter is officially named as one of five sites in the $500 billion Stargate Project, the OpenAI/Oracle/SoftBank AI infrastructure initiative. · source
2025-10-31lawsuit
New Mexico Environmental Law Center files a lawsuit on behalf of residents challenging the Dona Ana County commissioners funding ordinance approvals for Project Jupiter. · source
2025-12-01permit
Air quality permit applications for Project Jupiter are filed with the New Mexico Environment Department, showing potential emissions of up to 14 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. · source
2025-12-20report
BorderPlex Digital Assets presents renewable energy plans targeting 500 MW of renewables by 2028 and 1,000 MW by 2032 to offset Project Jupiter power draw. · source
2026-01-08coverage
Forbes profiles the developers and scale of Project Jupiter, detailing plans for four data center buildings, microgrids, and phased power buildout from 700-900 MW toward 4 GW. · source
2026-04-27environmental
Oracle, BorderPlex, and Bloom Energy announce Project Jupiter will switch from natural gas turbines to a 2.45 GW Bloom Energy solid-oxide fuel cell microgrid, cutting NOx emissions roughly 92% and using negligible water, after community pushback. · source
2026-07-16hearing
New Mexico Environment Department schedules an October 19 public hearing on Project Jupiter air quality permit application. · source
2026-07-23coverage
Food and Water Watch publishes an analysis arguing Project Jupiter exemplifies Big Tech playbook for pushing through data centers with limited transparency. · source
2026-07-28protest
Dona Ana County commissioners meeting on Project Jupiter turns disruptive: three protesters are arrested/ejected, Oracle VP pledges 7,000 peak construction jobs and no public drinking water use, and state Rep. Rubio says public comment was suppressed. · source
2026-07-31hearing
Project Jupiter air quality permit public hearing is rescheduled from October to September. · source
2026-08-03hearing
New Mexico Environmental Law Center reports the Project Jupiter air quality permit hearing date was moved again amid disputes over scheduling. · source
2026-08-19lawsuit
Center for Biological Diversity asks the New Mexico Supreme Court to pause Project Jupiter air quality permit hearing, disputing the rescheduled hearing date. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (1 filed · 11 places to look)

Permits already on file (1)

Filings we have a source for — the record, not a place to look for one.

2025-12-01
Air quality permit applications for Project Jupiter are filed with the New Mexico Environment Department, showing potential emissions of up to 14 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. · source

State environmental permits

Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.

New Mexico Environment Dept. — Air Quality BureauThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
Search New Mexico Environment Dept. — Air Quality Bureau for this projectsearchThis state publishes no searchable permit database, so a written records request to the agency is the reliable route. Use this search only to find the right office.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

Search Doña Ana County planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
Search Doña Ana County property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.

Utility & grid records

The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.

Southwest Power Pool (Plains) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
New Mexico Public Regulation Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.

Federal databases

Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.

EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site.
EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.

These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.

Around here

New Mexico briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.

Other tracked projects in New Mexico

Green Data Socorro campus (New Mexico Tech land) — Socorro (Socorro County) Withdrawn
Meta Los Lunas — Los Lunas Operating
OpenAI Stargate New Mexico — Santa Teresa In review

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “OpenAI Stargate Doña Ana County”, aigridwatch.com/projects/openai-stargate-dona-ana-nm, retrieved 2026-10-11.

As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing

A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.

Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).