Donald Trump announced the birth of Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank which should invest $500 billion in the development of AI infrastructure in the United States. The new president is committed to helping them in their projects, particularly in terms of energy supply.
Surrounded by the bosses of OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, Donald Trump announced “the largest AI infrastructure project in history” during a presentation at the White House. Associated in a new company called Stargate, the three giants have committed to investing $100 billion immediately in the development of AI data centers in the United States. The amount could reach 500 billion over the next four years, therefore under Trump’s mandate.
Besides OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, Abu Dhabi’s MGX fund will also participate in the investment. Microsoft, NVIDIA and Arm are mentioned as purely technological partners. Oracle boss Larry Ellison indicated that the first giant data center is already under construction in Texas.
A Trump-style deal
“AI is very popular. It seems that a lot of intelligent people are very interested in this issue,” declared the American president, and added that Stargate would create more than 100,000 jobs in the United States and that without this initiative, these investments would be made elsewhere, notably in China. In turn, the bosses of OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank declared that the deal would not have taken place without Trump.
-The AI giants are not leaving empty-handed. As we recently indicated, they have been putting pressure on the American government for many months to facilitate their data center, land and energy infrastructure projects. Trump promised free rein in this matter with their data. “I’m going to help a lot through emergency declarations, because we have an emergency situation, we have to build these things so that they produce a lot of electricity. And we will give them the possibility to do it very easily on their own sites if they wish.
Impact on the agreement between OpenAI and Microsoft
The Stargate project has a first indirect consequence. OpenAI will operate the data centers developed by Stargate, while its agreement with Microsoft stipulated the exclusive use of Azure infrastructures. In a press release, Microsoft explains that it has approved “the possibility for OpenAI to build additional capabilities, primarily for research and training of its models”. Microsoft emphasizes that the other terms of the agreement remain unchanged, in particular the provision of the OpenAI API on Azure exclusively.
