Daniel Gonzalez woke up early on March 14 in Abilene, Texas to drop off a concrete box full of electrical components at one of the city’s two Stargate data centers. The 49-year-old truck driver says that when he pulled up to the site that Saturday morning, he was told by another worker that it was understaffed, the employees in a rush. “They were cutting corners,” Gonzalez says. 

A digging machine hammered away nearby, making it difficult for the workers to hear each other; they also lacked walkie-talkies that are common practice for communication on noisy sites, Gonzalez says. As he worked to remove the metal transport chains securing the front of the box, another worker on a ladder, unaware of Gonzalez’s position, threw a chain down, striking him across the head, knocking his hard hat off and concussing him, according to Gonzalez. 

Gonzalez says he blacked out. He was driven to a nearby medical center, where he was diagnosed with a closed-head injury, according to his discharge papers. It was the first injury he’d suffered in his 25 years as a truck driver, he says. He is now suing two contractors on the Stargate site—Kiewit Corporation, whose subsidiary The Industrial Company is constructing the site, and MMR Group—alleging negligence and systemic safety issues. “There’s a lack of communication, a lack of manpower, and a bunch of safety regulations they violated,” Gonzalez says. “The site is just sloppy.” 

Spokespeople for Kiewit and MMR declined to comment directly on the suit. “Nothing is more important than safety. It is core to how we operate across all of our companies and projects,” a Kiewit spokesperson wrote in an email to TIME. An MMR spokesperson wrote: “Our commitment to the health, safety, and well-being of our employees, subcontractors, and trade partners is a fundamental value of our organization.

Gonzalez’s story is one of several reports about onsite accidents or alleged safety lapses at the Stargate data centers in Abilene, the flagship location of a $500 billion infrastructure project announced by President Donald Trump and the leaders of OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank in January 2025. A TIME investigation—based on federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) filings, two legal filings, a review of 911 call logs, and interviews with three workers at the site—points to safety issues emerging amid the push by big tech companies to build AI infrastructure at an unprecedented scale and speed. 

Three separate incidents in 2025 left workers with leg fractures, according to OSHA reports reviewed by TIME. One worker was pinned below an excavator. Another was knocked off a ladder. A third was crushed by 1,400 pounds of glass panels due to employees being in a “rush,” a project manager wrote as part of an OSHA investigation. 

Call-sheet records from the Taylor County Sheriff's Office show that 911 was called from the first Abilene Stargate site 14 times since December 2024. The reports ranged from a man’s foot being run over by a machine; a neck injury due to a fallen object; possible heat stroke and dehydration incidents; and an employee in his mid-20s who suffered an apparent heart attack. (Construction on the site began in 2024, led by the developer Crusoe, before Oracle and OpenAI announced their involvement.)

A lawsuit filed in April against DPR Construction, a lead contractor at the site, alleges that a concrete delivery driver was struck with a cement chute and suffered bodily injuries. The driver accuses DPR of negligence and seeks damages above $250,000. A representative for DPR declined to comment on pending litigation. 

Two electricians at Stargate, who like others interviewed for this story spoke on condition of anonymity because they had signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), tell TIME the project had unusually lax safety practices. The sites at times lacked functioning handwashing stations, they allege, adding that workers were told by managers that cold drinking water was a “luxury” and had fans taken away during the Texas summer. One worker says that last summer, an ambulance appeared on site to treat a medical issue every day for a week straight. 

“While they’re breaking records, they’re harming a lot of people, physically and mentally,” says one worker.  

It is difficult to compare the rate of incidents and allegations at the Abilene Stargate sites to industry norms. NDAs are common in the construction industry and AI infrastructure projects, with management citing the importance of keeping trade secrets in a highly competitive field. Sprawling sites like these—some 8,000 people have worked 20 million hours at Stargate’s first Abilene campus, according to Oracle—are managed by a complicated web of contractors and subcontractors, in which responsibility for worker safety is diffused down the chain. And running logs of safety incidents onsite are written and maintained by their site’s managers, as opposed to OSHA.  

Oracle, in an email to TIME, wrote that the site was “far safer than most,” and said it recorded safety incidents at a rate “approximately 2.5x lower than industry norms based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data.” Spokespeople from DPR and Crusoe cited the same statistic. When asked to provide internal data to support that assertion, however, Oracle declined, and DPR and Crusoe did not provide responses. Because the underlying BLS injury logs are self-reported by employers, their completeness has long been debated. A 2009 Government Accountability Office report found that both employers and employees were disincentivized to record all workplace injuries, while a 2004 peer-reviewed study funded in part by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health estimated that official logs missed between 33% and 69% of work-related injuries and illnesses.

The number of big data center construction projects is exploding around the country as the AI boom expands. Sean Goldhammer, the employment legal services director at the Texas-based organization Workers Defense Project, says that the safety standards at massive construction sites like Stargate are often violated due to the expansive web of contractors and subcontractors facing time pressure, financial constraints, and logistical challenges. 

“It is kind of a Wild Wild West,” he says. (Goldhammer has not personally visited a Stargate site.) “When materials are only becoming more expensive, the big area to cut is on the labor side. You have a lot of people who are overworked on understaffed sites, and you see a lot of corner cutting around safety.” 

OSHA Complaints

On Trump’s second day in office, he announced Abilene would be the flagship location of Stargate. “I'm going to help a lot through emergency declarations, because we have an emergency. We have to get this stuff built,” Trump said, joined in the Roosevelt Room of the White House by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, and SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son. 

The companies said they were prioritizing speed in order to beat China in the AI arms race. “No one in the history of man built data centers this fast,” OpenAI finance chief Sarah Friar told CNBC. (An OpenAI spokesperson did not respond to a series of specific questions for this story.) When construction began in earnest last year, city leaders predicted a massive economic windfall for Abilene. The project was soon employing thousands of workers, including truckers, gravel layers, and paving companies. 

But the economic gains have come with a cost, court documents, OSHA filings, and local emergency response logs show. 

On May 23, 2025, a worker helping to guide a mini excavator at the site was pinned beneath its treads, suffering “fractures to his right and left femurs, his pelvis and his right ankle." OSHA issued a $5,674 penalty to contractor DPR Construction, and faulted DPR for not training workers to “recognize, avoid, control or eliminate the hazards associated while operating the excavator in reverse.” DPR contested the citation, placing blame on the employee. OSHA withdrew the citation and penalty in a settlement agreement. 

“We take allegations related to worker safety seriously and, when concerns are raised, we review them and take appropriate action. This is in addition to regular third-party audits, OSHA oversight, daily pre-task planning, and open reporting channels for workers,” a spokesperson for DPR wrote in a statement to TIME. The spokesperson added that claims of “systemic safety issues have been investigated, and there is no credible evidence to substantiate them.”

Debbie Berkowitz, a former OSHA adviser who is now a fellow at Georgetown’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, reviewed the OSHA file for the DPR Construction incident and told TIME it was “highly unusual for OSHA to vacate a citation, especially when the settlement agreement confirms there was a hazard that the company agreed to abate.” 

“This could send a signal to employers in dangerous industries like construction that OSHA is giving employers a pass when safety violations are found—even when a worker is seriously injured,” Berkowitz says. 

A representative for OSHA did not respond to a list of questions for this story. 

A week after the excavator incident, three glass panels—together weighing 1,400 pounds—fell on another worker’s leg, “resulting in a femoral shaft fracture that required surgery,” according to the OSHA report. As part of a subsequent investigation, the subcontractor Abilene Glass & Mirror wrote in a statement to OSHA that the “employees were in a rush to complete the project,” but were subsequently trained on how to safely un-crate glass. OSHA deemed the response satisfactory and closed the probe a month later. A representative for Abilene Glass & Mirror did not respond to a request for comment. 

On July 28, an employee standing on a ladder while insulating piping was struck in the face when the jack used to raise the pipe slipped, according to another OSHA report. The employee fell off the ladder and sustained “fractures to their left tibia and fibula.” Again OSHA investigated. It found that the jack-and-pole combinations were “not designed for the purpose and was not safe,” and issued a $21,000 penalty to subcontractor Ruiz-Boyter Construction & Supplies. OSHA later reduced the penalty to $13,000 because it found the subcontractor had exhibited “good faith” and did not have repeat violations. A representative for Ruiz-Boyter did not respond to a request for comment.

“Our partners operate with a safety-first culture, and when incidents occur, they respond immediately and appropriately, which means emergency and offsite medical services are provided when needed. We will continue to prioritize the safety and well-being of our workers while driving one of the largest reindustrialization efforts in our country’s history,” an Oracle spokesperson wrote in an email to TIME.

In April 2026, delivery driver Angelica Hernandez sued DPR Construction for negligence. In court documents, which TIME obtained, Hernandez alleges that when she showed up to the Stargate site to deliver concrete on October 7, 2025, she was struck by a cement chute in part due to DPR “allowing employees to operate in a manner that endangered individuals on the premises” and “failing to maintain a safe working environment for deliveries.” Hernandez, the complaint alleges, suffered injuries to her head, shoulder, neck, and wrist, and incurred medical expenses that she paid for herself. 

The incident did not appear in the 911 call logs sent to TIME by the Taylor County Sheriff’s Office. Hernandez’s lawyer declined to comment or to make her available for an interview, citing ongoing litigation. DPR Construction filed an initial response in court on May 22 denying all allegations. The company also declined to comment on the case to TIME, citing pending litigation.  

Separate police records obtained by TIME from the Abilene Police Department and the Taylor County Sheriff's Office describe another emergency response at the site, though authorities have not determined whether it was work-related. On Oct. 1, 2025, 61-year-old Andre Guthrie, a worker at the first Stargate site in Abilene, was found dead inside an on-site port-a-potty. “He is cold and…bleeding from the nose, no color,” the police call notes read. A representative for the Abilene Police Department wrote in an email on May 5 that a “medical event was suspected” and “there were no indications of foul play,” but that the investigation remained “ongoing."

DPR Construction wrote in an email to TIME that “medical professionals determined” Guthrie’s death “was unrelated to workplace conditions,” but the Abilene Police Department told TIME it could not “confirm or deny” that claim as it awaited the autopsy results. An OSHA representative told TIME that they were “not aware” of the fatality.

Allegations from the site

In conversations with TIME, two workers at Stargate alleged pervasive problems at the site. One electrician described workplace conditions as unhygienic, saying handwashing stations often lacked water or soap, and that the company took away handheld fans during stretches of 110-degree Texas heat in July. (Between 2010 and 2021, at least 53 workers across Texas died from heat-related illnesses.) The electrician said he worked 60-hour weeks in those conditions. At one point, he says, he suffered a panic attack on site. “You feel disposable,” he says. “It’s the whole AI race: trying to catch up with Google, because of the speed they’re trying to go at.” 

The electrician alleges the site had undocumented workers, which he says created a culture of fear. “They’re scared to stand up for labor rights,” he says, “so they will not speak out about anything.”

A representative for the electrical union IBEW’s local 681, which covers Abilene, did not respond to a request for comment. 

A representative for Crusoe, which is developing the site, wrote that “Crusoe fully complies with all state and federal employment laws and only hires employees authorized to work in the United States.” The spokesperson added: “We remain vigilant, and committed to strengthening safety for everyone on this project.”

Another electrician told TIME the Stargate data center was the worst site he’s worked on. In the height of the Texas summer, he says, workers were told that cold drinking water was a “luxury, not a right,” and were written up for spending too much time inside cooling stations. He also said that the quality of work expected of them was lower than at other sites. “Quality control is the most important part of the electrical trade, or someone could get hurt or die,” he says.

Scott Durbin, a Virginia-based IBEW electrical worker who is a co-founder of the Caucus of Rank-and-file Electrical Workers (CREW), says that 60-hour work weeks are now common on data center jobs. “Union workers have spent over a century fighting for industry wide safety standards—only to see profit-obsessed contractors try to wipe those away by exploiting our job-scared non-union siblings and pushing workers harder and harder,” he wrote to TIME.

Dizzy Spells

In the month since his onsite injury, Daniel Gonzalez has returned to the second Stargate site several times to drop off loads, and says the safety protocols have improved. There are now more staff with walkie-talkies to help with unloading, he says. But he nevertheless filed a suit against the contractors Kiewit and MMR, alleging that they should have been responsible for maintaining a safe work environment. He seeks unspecified damages. In June, the defendants transferred the action to federal court. 

Gonzalez says he’s been suffering from “physical impairment” and concussion-like symptoms, including dizzy spells and loss of balance. He is concerned about his ability to pass the biennial physical required for commercial truck drivers to keep their licenses. 

He says he doesn’t spend much time thinking about what’s being built at the data centers. To him, they’re just another project in a career that’s spanned more than two decades—one he built without the need for AI or digital tools. “Everything I do, it’s all hands-on and about your experience and your knowledge,” he says. “I really don’t mess with computers.”