On Tuesday, Jan. 21, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison appeared at the White House with President Donald Trump to announce the creation of a joint AI infrastructure project called Stargate. Introducing the CEOs, President Trump hailed Stargate as “ a new American company that will invest $500 billion at least in AI infrastructure in the United States and move and very, very quickly, moving very rapidly, creating over 100,000 American jobs almost immediately.” The goal of the venture, Trump said, is to “build the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of advancements in AI. And this will include the construction of colossal data centers, very, very massive structures. I was in the real estate business. These buildings, these are big, beautiful buildings.”
Oracle’s Larry Ellison spoke of data centers already under construction in Texas. OpenAI’s Altman promised advances in AI will mean “ diseases get cured at an unprecedented rate.” And Softbank’s Masayoshi Son made more grandiose promises. “ [Artificial general intelligence] is coming very, very soon,” he said. “And then after that, that’s not the goal. After that, artificial superintelligence. We’ll come to solve the issues that mankind would never ever have thought that we could solve. Well, this is the beginning of our golden age.” Masayoshi Son promised an initial investment of $100 billion with a promise to reach $500 billion within five years.
A statement on OpenAI’s website laid out more details, promising the venture would “not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.” It says the first equity funders in the Stargate venture are SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX. “SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners for Stargate, with SoftBank having financial responsibility and OpenAI having operational responsibility. Masayoshi Son will be the chairman.” The statement adds that “Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, and OpenAI are the key initial technology partners,” and that the partners are “evaluating potential sites across the country for more campuses” even as the agreements are being drawn up.
The announcement followed President Trump’s order, issued hours after his inauguration, rescinding President Joe Biden’s Oct. 30, 2023, Executive Order on the “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.” That move fulfilled a promise of the GOP platform adopted at the Republican National Convention in July. The GOP claimed that the Biden order “hinders AI innovation” and “imposes radical leftwing ideas” on its development. But large-scale AI infrastructure development was a focus of the Biden administration, as well. A week before he left office, President Biden signed an Executive Order “leasing federal sites owned by Defense and Energy departments to host gigawatt-scale AI data centers and new clean power facilities,” according to Reuters.
Across the United States, some communities have resisted the development of data centers, often over environmental and natural resource concerns – data centers use an enormous amount of electricity and water. Whether the Trump administration will succeed in clearing the path for development, and whether the demand exists to meet this scale of investment, remains to be seen.