In September 2025, the board of Saline Township, Michigan, gathered for a vote on a proposed $7 billion artificial intelligence (AI) mega-project in their area.
Four of the small township’s five board members rejected the bid by OpenAI, Oracle, and Related Digital to purchase a 575-acre plot of land for development.
Residents of the rural township, which lies southeast of Detroit, feared that the massive project—a data center used to power the company’s AI services—could result in a serious spike in their utility prices, despite OpenAI’s vow to provide its own power for the site.
But the next month, a settlement between the two was filed in state courts, in which OpenAI’s lawyers accused Saline Township of exclusionary zoning practices against them….