Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who last week announced that she’s not running for President in 2028, posed with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Monday at a groundbreaking ceremony for the $16 billion AI data center campus in Saline Township, Michigan, where a 1.4-gigawatt data center will be built on 250 acres of farmland.
Several residents of the rural town (population under 3,000) have been protesting the development since 2025, complaining about a lack of transparency, particularly regarding the data center’s massive energy needs.
Whitmer, who called the OpenAI and Oracle data center “the largest economic project in Michigan history,” said at the ceremony: “I will only ever open Michigan to companies that respect our strict environmental standards and protect our air, land and water. The Barn meets all those high standards.”
The project has been nicknamed the Barn due to its design and placement on former farmland.
Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) responded to the groundbreaking event on social media: “Disgusting. So disappointed in Governor Whitmer’s support of data center expansions in our state especially when so many Michiganders are opposed.”
Disgusting.
So disappointed in Governor Whitmer’s support of data center expansions in our state especially when so many Michiganders are opposed. https://t.co/d3o1pYJb01
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) June 1, 2026
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat who ran against Whitmer in the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary and is currently running for Senate in Michigan, aimed his protest against the OpenAI CEO, responding: “Sam Altman is in town declaring victory on a data center project they had to pass without public comment. We need Terms of Engagement at the federal level to keep Big Tech from rolling over state and local governments to shove projects down our throats without clear protections.”
There is opposition to the data center on both sides of the political aisle. Monica Yatooma of the Michigan Republican Party, who says she was “a key leader in developing and executing the strategy that helped deliver Michigan for President Donald Trump in 2024…and rebuild the Republican ground game,” replied to Tlaib’s post: “Well [expletive]… never thought I’d be agreeing with Rashida Tlaib on anything!”
Another voice at the groundbreaking ceremony was Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk, who defended the amount of energy and water needed for the huge data center to operate.
He said: “These data centers, yes, they use water to cool, but they actually use a very similar system to your car. The water recirculates, and then the heat goes out through the air.”
[NOTE: On his first day back in the White House in January 2025, President Trump announced the $500 billion “Stargate” AI project with Sam Altman, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son to build such data centers across the United States. The formation of Stargate followed Trump’s earlier announcement of an Emirati company (DAMAC Properties) led by billionaire Hussain Sajwani, a close business partner of the Trump family, planning to invest $20 billion in the building of AI data centers in the United States.]
Bipartisan objection to OpenAI isn’t limited to its massive data center buildout. Florida Republican Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a lawsuit on Monday against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, “alleging that the AI startup’s ChatGPT is unsafe and that the company misled the public about associated risks.”