The US midterm elections delivered a clear message this week: voters are increasingly wary of the artificial intelligence build-out. Democrats secured control of Congress and key governorships in Texas, Georgia, and Ohio, largely on pledges to rein in data centre construction. The result sent shockwaves through the tech sector, with AI-related stocks tumbling and companies scrambling to adjust their messaging.
Senator Bernie Sanders, a prominent voice in the campaign, took to X to declare: “Americans don’t want Big Tech oligarchs wrecking the environment, gutting jobs and threatening humanity’s future.” He called for a “national data center moratorium now.” That sentiment appears to have resonated with voters, and investors are now pricing in the risk of tighter regulation.
OpenAI’s charm offensive
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has responded with what can only be described as a charm offensive. In a newly published policy blueprint, the firm pledges to give “communities a meaningful voice” in the siting of its compute campuses, protect families from new costs, and “broadly share the economic gains of AI.” It also released a compact outlining what communities can expect from future campuses the company owns and operates.
The timing is notable: in September, OpenAI rebranded its data centres as “computer campuses,” a shift in language that seems designed to soften their industrial image. The company has also promised to cover electricity and grid upgrade costs in affected areas, and to disclose construction plans, noise studies, and water usage data to the public.
Yet questions remain. The commitments apply only to sites OpenAI owns outright, leaving its partnerships with Oracle and other infrastructure providers unclear. And whether these pledges will satisfy local opposition is far from certain.
Meta and the industry’s image problem
Meta, which had pledged $1 billion (€890m) to build a massive data centre in Ohio, saw its shares fall about 4% on Thursday. The company’s president, Dina Powell McCormick, acknowledged the industry’s failure to communicate its benefits. “The visible manifestation of AI is a data centre, and it’s something that people can say, ‘I don’t want this in my community’,” she told the Wall Street Journal Tech Conference.
She added: “I think there’s an underlying bigger issue, which is how people feel about AI in general.” Powell McCormick stressed the stakes: “The stakes for who builds the technology that cures cancer, that gives access to education, that is also a very fundamental difference.” She argued that the way to ensure no one is left behind is to democratise the technology, making it accessible “in a very fair and transparent way.”
Elon Musk’s losing bet
Elon Musk, who poured $474 million (€420 million) into Republican campaigns, has been among the biggest losers. His “Colossus” project—a sprawling cluster of AI data centres and supercomputers in Memphis—now looks more vulnerable. Musk took to X to muse that “data centres in space looking pretty appealing right now.” Shares in SpaceX fell nearly 4%, and Tesla dropped 2% this week.
Global chipmakers feel the heat
The sell-off hit semiconductor companies worldwide. Nvidia, the leading supplier of AI chips, saw its shares plunge 9%, knocking founder Jensen Huang out of the top 10 on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, from ninth to 13th place. The pain spread across Europe: German chipmaker Infineon slid 8%, while Dutch lithography giant ASML—the sole maker of the EUV machines essential for advanced chips—dropped 6%. Taiwan’s TSMC, which manufactures most of the world’s chips for Nvidia, Apple, AMD, and Qualcomm, fell 10%.
These declines echo a broader global sell-off driven by data centre doubts, a trend that has already prompted campaigners across Europe to demand a freeze on new data centres.
What happens next?
President Trump, who has dismissed AI safety concerns as a “hoax,” may resist Democratic efforts. But with Congress now in opposition hands, the political landscape has shifted. For Europe, the implications are significant: the continent is both a host for data centres and a key supplier of chipmaking equipment. As the debate intensifies, European leaders are weighing how to respond to a weakened US administration and a more assertive Congress.
The industry’s response so far has been defensive. Whether OpenAI’s promises, Meta’s rhetoric, or Musk’s space-based fantasies can calm public anger remains to be seen. One thing is clear: the era of unchecked data centre expansion is over, and companies will need to adapt—or face the consequences.
