Technology: Donald Trump announces a huge AI project in the United States

Donald Trump announced on Tuesday a new artificial intelligence (AI) project, called “Stargate”, including investments of “at least 500 billion dollars” (around 450 billion francs, editor’s note) in AI infrastructures in the United States. United.

Stargate brings together the “cloud” (remote computing) specialist Oracle, the Japanese investment company SoftBank, and the generative AI start-up OpenAI. Donald Trump’s presentation was made at the White House, in the presence of the directors of these three companies.

Constructions de «data centers»

SoftBank boss Masayoshi Son said the joint venture would “start deploying $100 billion immediately,” with the goal of reaching a total of $500 over four years.

Donald Trump explained that this commitment was in addition to that already made by Masayoshi Son in mid-December, relating to 100 to 200 billion dollars of investments in the American technology sector within four years. According to a joint press release published Tuesday, in addition to SoftBank, Oracle and OpenAI, “Stargate” is financially supported by the MGX investment fund, backed by the United Arab Emirates.

The president and co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, revealed that the project mainly focused on the construction of data hosting and processing centers, the famous “data centers”. “The first are already under construction in Texas,” near Abilene (north-east), said the manager.

“More than 100,000 jobs”

The development of the “cloud”, of AI in general and of generative AI in particular requires immense data storage capacities, which has boosted the need for “data centers”. Donald Trump assured that the creation of “Stargate” would create “almost immediately more than 100,000 jobs” in the United States.

This new joint company “will build the physical and virtual infrastructures to carry the next generation of AI,” said the American president. Masayoshi Son added that American semiconductor giant Nvidia was a partner in the project.

These investments “are money that normally would have gone to China or other countries, but more particularly to China,” said Donald Trump. Each in turn, the three bosses thanked Donald Trump. “We couldn’t have done this without you,” Masayoshi Son said.

A turning point for OpenAI

On Monday, Donald Trump reversed an executive order issued by his predecessor Joe Biden on AI security, a move interpreted as a transition to a more moderate regulatory approach.

“Stargate” marks a turning point for the generative AI prodigy OpenAI, which had until now relied on the infrastructure of its partner Microsoft and will now be able to count on its own data centers.

OpenAI nevertheless took care to say that it “continued its work with Microsoft”, which is its 49% shareholder. In a report published in September, OpenAI pleaded with the US government for the creation of giant 5 gigawatt (GW) data centers, at an estimated cost of $100 billion.

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