OpenAI wants its data centres called "AI compute campuses"

A new name for an unpopular building

OpenAI is preparing a public campaign for after the US midterm elections on Tuesday and, as part of it, wants its data centres to be called "AI compute campuses", according to reporting by Axios that TechCrunch summarised.

The company's chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, discussed the plan with Axios. The phrase is not a technical description. It is an attempt to change what people picture when they hear about the vast buildings that train and run AI models, at a moment when those buildings have become a local political issue in the United States.

What the company says the words mean

A spokesperson told Business Insider that "compute campuses better describes the scale and role of the infrastructure we're building for AI", Gizmodo reported, adding that the company describes them as "long-term investments in computing, energy infrastructure and skilled work".

That framing shifts attention from electricity bills and water use to investment and jobs. It also gives the company a phrase that does not contain the words "data centre", which is the term local opponents have learned to use in planning meetings. The same build-out is visible in the company's other infrastructure arguments, such as its push to lock up memory supply, covered in our report on Altman's RAM plans for data centres.

Why the timing is political

Lehane told Axios that the midterms will be "a bit of a movie trailer for what you're going to see in 2028", when he expects AI to be "the issue" in the presidential election.

The campaign therefore starts after the votes are counted, not before. TechCrunch reported that Democrats seem likely to win back the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate, which would change which committees review AI policy and which lawmakers the company needs to persuade.

The numbers behind the rebrand

The rebrand is a response to polling. Gizmodo cited a Pew survey from the summer showing that only 16 per cent of Americans held a positive view of AI's future role in society.

A September Pew survey on data centres found that only 4 per cent of respondents thought the buildings had a positive impact across the areas asked about: the environment, utility costs, neighbourhood quality of life, jobs and tax revenue.

That is the gap the new phrase is meant to close, and it is not obvious that a name can close it. The rebrand also fits a wider pattern in Washington. Gizmodo noted that the administration has pushed the term "Super Intelligence" in place of "artificial intelligence", and that many AI leaders have adopted it, although OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has not. Renaming a contested technology has become a political habit this year, which is one reason a company might try it on a contested building.

The local fight the name will not settle

Data centre disputes have become a fixture of local politics, with residents raising concerns about power demand, water use, noise and the share of tax revenue that stays in the community.

Lehane described the debate as "good and healthy", telling Axios that "communities should hold companies responsible and accountable so they really and truly get a transformative benefit from these projects". The pressure has already changed corporate behaviour: Amazon and Microsoft have said they will no longer use non-disclosure agreements in negotiations with local governments, a shift TechCrunch linked to the data centre debate.

That shift matters because it changes what residents can learn while a project is still being negotiated. Companies argue confidentiality protects commercial terms; critics say it stops communities from comparing offers. Lehane's answer, that communities should hold companies accountable, assumes the information needed to do that is actually available.

The rest of the pitch

The rebrand is one item in a wider set of proposals. Axios reported that Lehane also discussed developing AI "speed limits", finding ways to show people that AI empowers them in daily life, and pushing the United States to take a role in setting global standards.

Each of those ideas requires the same thing the name change requires: public trust. The company is trying to argue that the technology can be governed without being slowed down, which is a difficult case to make to communities that are already dealing with the buildings themselves.

What to watch after the election

The immediate test is whether the phrase travels. If local officials and reporters start writing "compute campus" in planning documents, the rebrand has worked at the level it was designed to work. If they keep writing "data centre", it has not.

The bigger test is spending. OpenAI has been cutting its fundraising target, a shift we covered in our report on the funding target cut, and the industry's capital commitments now run into the trillions, as our account of the AI capex commitments sets out. That means the case for the buildings has to be made to investors as well as to voters. A new name does not change the electricity bill, and that is the number local governments will keep asking about. The company's next quarterly disclosures and the first planning votes after the election will show whether the phrase bought anything more than a headline.