Emerging Technology
Trump Reveals $500 Billion AI Project Stargate By OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, & More
By TechDogs Bureau

Updated on Wed, Jan 22, 2025
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This wasn’t much of a surprise considering how vocal Trump’s support for the sector was even before election day. Furthermore, his inauguration was attended by tech world stalwarts such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bernard Arnault, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook, Sam Altman, Shou Zi Chew, and others.
Adding to his first day’s revoke of ex-President Joe Biden’s 2023 AI executive order that looked at monitoring the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, President Trump revealed a rather big AI project that ropes in some of the biggest names in the tech industry.
The Project Stargate
At the Roosevelt Room in the White House, President Trump announced that OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle, would come together to boost AI infrastructure in the country.
The announcement was backed by news releases published on OpenAI's and SoftBank’s websites, which also provided more details about the project.
The move will be carried out with the formation of a new joint venture known as Stargate, which consists of an investment of up to $500 billion that will be used to build data centers and other necessary infrastructure for ChatGPT-maker OpenAI in the United States.
As per the release, the move will result in the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs, generate massive economic benefits for the entire world, and help the U.S. secure a leading position in the AI industry.
The $500 billion investment will begin with an immediate deployment of $100 billion, with the remaining amount spread over the next four years. In this regard, ground has already been broken in Texas for the first data center, while other potential sites around the country for campuses are being evaluated. Stargate plans to construct 20 data centers through the project.
As per the release, “This project will 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.”
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, Oracle Co-Founder Larry Ellison, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who were alongside Trump during the announcement, revealed the project wouldn’t have gone ahead if Trump didn’t win.
Son said, “We wouldn't have decided to do this unless you won,” while Altman declared, “For AGI to get built here, we wouldn't be able to do this without you, Mr. President.”
Stargate’s initial equity funders include SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX, while its lead partners are OpenAI and SoftBank. In this regard, SoftBank holds financial responsibility, while OpenAI will be responsible for operations.
SoftBank’s CEO will be the Chairman of Stargate.
Stargate’s initial technology partners include Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, and OpenAI. Ahead of this, Oracle, NVIDIA, and OpenAI will build and operate the computing system.
Building on OpenAI’s existing partnership with its primary backer, Microsoft, the release mentioned that OpenAI will continue to increase its consumption of Azure.
However, in a separate statement issued by Microsoft on its website, the partnership between the two companies is set to evolve with an announcement that’s “complementary” to its joint endeavors since 2019.
The New Microsoft-OpenAI Agreement
Building on OpenAI’s recent new, large Azure commitment, which will continue to support all OpenAI products as well as training, the new arrangement comes with changes to cloud computing capacity.
Where Microsoft was the exclusive provider of data center infrastructure for OpenAI to train and run its AI models, the new model will offer Microsoft a right of first refusal (ROFR) for new cloud computing capacity requirements of OpenAI.
Essentially, Microsoft will get a say in whether it wants to provide OpenAI’s AI workloads. If it chooses not to offer additional capacity or can’t meet its needs, OpenAI can approach rival cloud providers to train and run its AI models.
The move comes as Stargate is quite likely to see a mega push in AI technology development and deployment.
Despite the new developments, the key elements of the partnership between the two remain in place for the duration of the contract through 2030. This includes Microsoft accessing OpenAI’s IP, enjoying exclusivity of OpenAI’s APIs being deployed on Azure, and Microsoft remains a major investor in OpenAI in terms of funding and computing capacity, along with revenue sharing arrangements.
Microsoft further mentioned it was thrilled to continue its strategic partnership with OpenAI and partner on Stargate.
“All of us look forward to continuing to build and develop AI—and in particular AGI—for the benefit of all of humanity. We believe that this new step is critical on the path, and will enable creative people to figure out how to use AI to elevate humanity,” concluded the original Stargate announcement.
What do you think of Project Stargate?
Let us know in the comments below!
First published on Wed, Jan 22, 2025
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