OpenAI drops datacenter NDAs and promises to pay its own power bill

OpenAI published a National Community Compact on November 5 promising that every future campus it owns and operates will pay the full cost of the electricity it uses, plus the grid infrastructure needed to serve it — and post financial assurances before major spending so other customers are protected if a project is delayed, reduced or cancelled.

The compact also ends the secrecy that enraged towns: OpenAI says it will not ask public officials to sign nondisclosure agreements, apart from narrow carve-outs for security details and trade secrets, and will publish site-level water and electricity use, construction plans and independent noise studies before a campus opens and every year after.

The pledges land two days after voters backed datacenter curbs across the country, and OpenAI is asking lawmakers to write the same rules into law — including a Compute Campus Policy Blueprint that wants utility commissions to make big electricity users cover the costs they add to the grid.