OpenAI’s Sam Altman called it the “most important project of this era”, while SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said it was the “beginning of a golden age” as US President Donald Trump announced that three leading companies would invest up to $500 billion over the next four years in developing artificial intelligence infrastructure.
At the White House on Tuesday, Trump said OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle will form a joint venture called Stargate, and that he will help facilitate the project with emergency orders.
While Trump named the three companies, an OpenAi blog said Abu Dhabi-based MGX is also a lead partner in the project, while Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA are technology partners.
Trump said: “What we want to do is we want to keep it in this country. China is a competitor, others are competitors. We want to be in this country, and we’re making it available.
“I’m gonna help a lot through emergency declarations, because we have an emergency, we have to get this stuff built. They have to produce a lot of electricity. And we’ll make it possible for them to get this production done easily, at their own plants if they want.”
Trump said the new venture would create “over 100,000 American jobs almost immediately”.
President Trump has unveiled a $500 BILLION American AI investment alongside tech leaders Larry Ellison, Masayoshi Son, and Sam Altman, set to create 100,000 American jobs almost immediately!
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 21, 2025
America is leading the way into the future! 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/B6IGcu7yiH
Details of the new partnership were not immediately provided, but Oracle’s Larry Ellison said 10 data centres for the project were already under construction in Texas, and that more were planned. Ellison said that the project was also tied to digital health records and would make it easier to treat diseases such as cancer by possibly developing a customised vaccine.
Altman said: “I think this will be the most important project of this era. I believe that as this technology progresses, we will see diseases get cured at an unprecedented rate.”
Son, Altman and Ellison credited Trump for helping to make the project possible, even though building has already started and the project goes back to 2024, when it was started under the Biden administration.
In a blog on their website, OpenAI wrote: “The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States. We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately.
“This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world. This project will not only support the re-industrialisation of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.”
OpenAI said the initial equity funders in Stargate 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. Son will be the chairman.
“As part of Stargate, Oracle, NVIDIA, and OpenAI will closely collaborate to build and operate this computing system. This builds on a deep collaboration between OpenAI and NVIDIA going back to 2016 and a newer partnership between OpenAI and Oracle,” OpenAI added.
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