OpenAI closes a landmark $110B funding round, Turner is tapped to deliver American Express's new global headquarters, and Google commits $880M to its fifth Midlothian data center. EBS Realty breaks ground on a 1.35M square foot industrial park, while Google also moves forward with a major 403 acre data center campus in Minnesota. MP Materials advances its $1.25B plant in Texas, and NVIDIA begins hiring for an orbital data center architect, let's dive in!

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OpenAI has closed a $110 billion funding round, the largest private financing in history, with Amazon leading at $50 billion, followed by Nvidia and SoftBank at $30 billion each. Valuations range from $730 billion pre-money to $840 billion post-money, up from $500 billion last October. More investors are expected to join, with a major IPO on the horizon. Microsoft sits out but holds an option to participate.

The Amazon deal runs deeper than the headline figure suggests. Of the $50 billion, $15 billion is committed upfront with the remainder subject to conditions. OpenAI is also extending its AWS partnership by $100 billion over eight years, drawing on 2 gigawatts of Trainium compute.

OpenAI is simultaneously expanding its Nvidia partnership, gaining dedicated inference and training capacity on Vera Rubin systems, part of a broader compute roadmap estimated at roughly $600 billion. Read deep dive here.

TheJobWalk’s got eyes on this too...

Powering up this week’s edition is Ace Electric, a specialist electrical contractor based out of Valdosta, Georgia, operating across Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee & Ohio.

​Ace is a family-owned and operated electrical contractor with a rich history dating back to its founding in 1975. Fast forward to today, they are ranked the No.1 Speciality Contractor in the Southeast.

With a 45+ year track record across commercial, industrial, and mission-critical markets, Ace isn’t just building systems, they’re building trust. With a team of over 1,200 employees, Ace continues to strive for excellence.

Their vision? To be the preferred electrical contractor and employer of choice in every community they serve.

American Express is making a serious bet on New York City. The financial services giant has announced plans to build a brand new global headquarters at 2 World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. A 55-story tower at 200 Greenwich Street that will span nearly 2 million square feet and serve as the company's sole home base. Foster + Partners is handling the design, and the building will have room for up to 10,000 employees.

Silverstein Properties is developing the project on Port Authority-owned land under a long-term ground lease, with Turner Construction tapped to deliver the core and shell. American Express will own and occupy the entire building outright.

Groundbreaking is set for spring 2026, with the doors expected to open in 2031. The project is projected to generate more than 3,200 construction jobs and pump roughly $5.9 billion into the city's economy. Read deep dive here.

Google is quietly expanding its Midlothian, Texas footprint with a fifth data center at its Railport Parkway campus. The 288,000 square foot, single-story facility, being developed through Sharka LLC, the same entity behind previous buildings on the site, carries an estimated $880 million construction cost. Work kicked off in late January 2026, with completion expected by February 2027. Read more here.

EBS Realty and partner Penwood Real Estate Investment Management have broken ground on Apex Ridge Logistics Park in North Las Vegas, Nevada. The 91-acre development inside Apex Industrial Park will deliver more than 1.35 million square feet of Class A logistics space across two buildings. Targeting e-commerce, manufacturing, and distribution tenants. The project is backed by $56.5 million in construction financing from PNC Bank. Read more here.

Google is planting a major new flag in northern Minnesota. The company confirmed plans for a 403-acre and 1.8 million square foot data center campus in Hermantown, near Duluth. It will include up to four buildings and a full buildout is expected over the next five to ten years. To power it, Google signed an electric service agreement with Minnesota Power covering 700MW of new clean energy, including wind and battery storage. Read more here.

MP Materials is bringing a major rare earth manufacturing hub to North Texas. The company plans to invest more than $1.25 billion in a 120-acre campus in Northlake, Texas, within the AllianceTexas development. Targeting over 1,500 jobs and boosting its total NdFeB magnet production capacity to around 10,000 metric tons annually across all facilities. The facility, dubbed the "10X" campus, is slated to begin commissioning in 2028. Read deep dive here.

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Rising 632 meters above Shanghai's Lujiazui district, Shanghai Tower is China's tallest building and the world's third tallest. The 128-story skyscraper opened in 2016. It houses offices, a luxury hotel, retail space, and observation decks, forming a dramatic skyline trio alongside Jin Mao Tower and the Shanghai World Financial Center.

Construction began in 2008, using a reinforced concrete core, mega-columns, and steel outrigger trusses to manage the demands of extreme height. The tower's most distinctive feature is its 120-degree twisting glass facade, designed by Gensler, that reduces wind loads by roughly 24 percent, a critical advantage in a typhoon prone region.

Additional innovations include double-skin curtain walls, sky gardens, and ultra-high-speed elevators, cementing Shanghai Tower as one of modern engineering's greatest achievements.

Nvidia is hiring an orbital data center system architect, a role focused on designing AI infrastructure for space. The position covers everything from GPU chips to satellites and inter-satellite connectivity, with expertise required in radiation tolerance, thermal control, and the mechanical demands of launch. The base salary ranges from $224,000 to $356,500.

The broader industry is already moving in this direction. Startup Starcloud launched an Nvidia H100 GPU into orbit and successfully ran AI workloads, with another launch planned using Amazon Web Services Outposts hardware. Google has also tested its TPUs for radiation tolerance and is exploring space deployments with Planet.

The most ambitious pitch belongs to SpaceX, where Elon Musk has floated the idea of a massive orbital AI compute constellation. Not everyone is buying it. Sam Altman, Jim Chanos, Matt Garman, and analysts at Gartner have all questioned whether large-scale orbital data centers make economic sense.