‘Clearly, people hate data centers’: Sam Altman admits Americans hate what he’s wrought as his own data centers head quits

OpenAI’s giant buildout is running into something money can’t fix: people don’t want the buildings. Sam Altman told Time that Americans are “pretty negative on AI” and, more bluntly, “clearly, people hate data centers—right now, at least.” That’s a rough line for a company planning to spend $50 billion this year on compute.

The awkward timing got worse when OpenAI’s head of data centers, Chris Malone, left the company the week before Altman’s interview, according to the Wall Street Journal and a statement CNBC said it obtained from OpenAI. The company said Malone had “recently reorganized” the infrastructure team. OpenAI has been scaling its Stargate project fast, after launching it with SoftBank early last year and saying it could put as much as $500 billion into U.S. AI infrastructure.

By September 2025, OpenAI said it had announced six U.S. Stargate sites, alongside its Abilene flagship and CoreWeave projects, for nearly 7 gigawatts of planned capacity. Since then it has added a Michigan campus with more than 1 gigawatt of capacity, a Georgia project tied to 3.2 GW of power, and an agreement this month to secure about 8 GW of IT capacity in southern Ohio. OpenAI says it is already thinking beyond Stargate’s original 10-gigawatt target. It also says it still doesn’t have enough computing power. “If anything, we should have bought a lot more,” said Sachin Katti, the OpenAI executive overseeing compute.

The problem is that the public mood is moving in the opposite direction. A Gallup poll released in May found seven in 10 Americans oppose building data centers in their area, and 48% strongly oppose them. People worry about electricity bills, water use, noise and pressure on local infrastructure. And the backlash is no longer just vibes. At least 48 projects worth $156 billion have been blocked or stalled by local resistance.

That pushback is now spilling into policy. Local officials had proposed more than 120 moratoriums across 38 states by July. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered regulators to scrutinize data centers before they can connect to the grid, which matters a lot because Texas is central to Stargate’s plans. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro also added new energy, environmental and community requirements and pulled AI data centers out of a fast-track permitting program. Even voters in Trump country aren’t buying the pitch: a Fox News poll found majorities of Republicans and MAGA voters oppose data centers.