Nearly $200bn of US data centres stalled as Trump doubles down on expansion

This comes as local opposition to the facilities becomes an issue ahead of the 3 November midterm elections.

Trump made the comments on 29 September after a White House lunch with technology executives, at which the leaders of Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI and Nvidia signed a voluntary AI safety accord.

Asked whether his support for data centres could hurt Republicans in November, Trump said the companies would be “making massive contributions to communities”.

A voluntary accord

The document, titled the White House Accord on Super Intelligence: Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities, was signed by Trump alongside Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, xAI’s Elon Musk and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.

It commits signatories to four layers of oversight for frontier AI models: internal controls, internal oversight teams, independent external auditors, and an independent board committee. Signatories will meet regularly to set safety standards, and the accord says it may eventually make sense to codify the steps into law. There is no requirement to publish audit results or name the auditors.

Trump described the accord as “morally binding”, though it is not legally enforceable, and said he is considering a 10-person board to oversee AI safety.

The approach drew criticism from Democrats. “Self-regulation? That’s a recipe for disaster,” said senator Elizabeth Warren.

Opposition measured in billions

The White House’s backing for expansion comes as resistance to US data centre construction holds at record levels. According to research group Data Center Watch, at least 45 projects worth nearly $68 billion were blocked or delayed by local opposition between April and June, more than half of all large developments proposed in the quarter.

That follows at least 75 projects worth around $130 billion in the first quarter, the largest single-quarter total on record, bringing the first-half figure to around 120 projects and nearly $200 billion. Opposition groups now operate in 49 states, as Capacity reported last week.

The group also found that communities are increasingly imposing moratoriums pre-emptively, before developers submit applications. More than 300 data centre-related bills have progressed through over 30 state legislatures this year.

Electricity bills sit at the centre of the backlash. The administration’s main response has been the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, under which Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI committed in March to build, bring or buy the power their data centres need and pay for the grid upgrades they trigger. Capacity covered the signing at the time.

The pledge was expanded in July to more than 200 additional utilities, data centre developers, cooperatives and states. The White House says it now covers 80% of power delivered to US homes and businesses.

Congress is moving to put those principles into law. Earlier this month the House of Representatives passed the Ratepayer Protection Act by 417 votes to three. The bill would require state utility regulators to consider standards making large loads cover the full incremental cost of the generation, transmission and distribution upgrades needed to serve them.

What it means for operators

For data centre developers and operators, the signal from Washington is consistent: expansion has political backing, but on condition that the industry absorbs its own power costs and wins over the communities where it builds.

Whether voluntary commitments are enough is less clear. Both the AI accord and the ratepayer pledge rely on companies honouring non-binding promises, while opposition is shifting from individual projects to pre-emptive local restrictions.

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