OpenAI Hears Voters’ Overwhelming Rebuke To Data Centers, Vows to Build More of Them

PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images The “blue tsunami” that swept over the midterm elections made it clear that voters are sick of tech billionaires meddling in politics, opposed to data center construction, and deeply suspicious of the AI industry. But OpenAI chief financial officer Sarah Friar apparently didn’t get that memo. In an interview with CNBC on Friday, she vowed that OpenAI would keep pouring money into data center construction so it can please its corporate customers — voters be damned. “When I think about the midterms, I need to keep thinking about how do we keep investing to meet that customer demand,” Friar told CNBC’s Sara Eisen in the interview. “It starts early with having built relationships with all of the hyperscalers, and it will continue to mean that we raise capital.” While Eisen is focused on “customer demand,” she should probably start paying attention to what voters are asking for. Across 41 local ballot measures on restricting AI data centers, voters supported all but one, Ballotpedia data showed. 56 percent of Americans considered AI and data centers a crucial or major factor in how they voted, according to NBC News exit polls. Meanwhile, Democratic challengers flipped seats in multiple states while campaigning against the data center buildout. Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa will become the first Democrat to lead the state in over three decades after promising voters to impose a moratorium on new data centers. But all that is moot to OpenAI’s Friar — since, in her eyes, people want AI. “The demand for AI is real,” Friar said in the interview. “I don’t think anyone’s arguing with that, or if they are, I think it’s a losing argument.” In all, she doesn’t believe that the election drastically changes anything for the company. To her, it seems, the backlash to AI is more or less a messaging problem. “If the midterm means more focus on data centers and communities, we’re going to keep doing the work to get into those communities and to build trust with them,” Friar said. She put it in more transactional terms elsewhere in the interview: “We are going to keep building out those relationships with communities so we can get the compute we need.” If Friar’s intentions are to portray the company as unphased, it’s coming a little too late. In the wake of the elections, OpenAI moved swiftly to announce “new commitments to the communities” where it’s building data centers, which included a promise to no longer use non-disclosure agreements while discussing data center construction with government officials. CEO Sam Altman, meanwhile, showed his poker face still needed improvement by immediately tweeting that “people should always be in control of the future.” More on AI: Voters Supported Every Single Anti-Data Center Proposal in America, Except One