President Donald Trump on January 22 announced a private joint venture known as Stargate that pledged to invest up to $500 million in infrastructure related to the development of artificial intelligence. The collaboration was formed by Openai, Oracle and SoftBank. Stargate also has investments from the MGX Middle East Fund.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, speaking at a White House news conference, said Stargate will begin building data centers and power generation needed for fast-moving AI development in Texas . The initial investment is expected to be $100 billion.
“It’s big money and high-quality people,” Trump said, adding that it was “a resounding statement of confidence in America’s potential” under his new administration.
Joining Trump in the White House were Softbank’s Masayoshi’s son Ellison and Openai’s Sam Altman. All three credited Trump with helping make the project possible. Ellison said Abilene, Texas, is Stargate’s first data center location and is already under construction from developer Crusoe Energy Systems
“AI holds incredible promise for all of us,” Ellison said. “We’ve been working with Openai for a while. The data centers are actually under construction.” Each building is approximately 500,000 square feet in size, he added, noting that there are currently 10 buildings under construction and that number will expand to 20 and other locations beyond Abilene.”
Crusoe Energy Systems is the design engineer and will operate the $3.4 million data center in Abilene.
The project is 100% leased to a company now known to be Oracle. Joint venture partner Lancium said in an October press release that it would provide clean energy to the campus. DPR Construction is the general contractor and broke ground on the project in 2022, with completion expected later this year. Lancium did not detail which method of power generation would be used in Abilene, but most similar data center projects have on-site wind or solar generation.
The other nine Ellison locations mentioned are not yet known, but the Texas data center market is robust with several developers building facilities with on-site power generation. Son, who will take on the role of Stargate’s chairman in addition to being CEO of SoftBank, has committed $100 billion in US data center projects. SoftBank and Openai are Stargate’s main partners, with SoftBank having financial responsibility and Openai having operational responsibility. ARM, Microsoft, NVIDIA, ORACLE and OPENAI were identified as Stargate’s initial key technology partners.
“We’ll turn around [the data centers] to Sam [Altman] to start training your next [AI] Model, “said Ellison.” The data center we’ve already built was the largest computer ever built. The data center we are building (now) will surpass it and be the largest computer ever built, which is what this AI enables.”
In addition, Trump issued an executive order on January 23 that revoked an executive order from the Biden administration that placed requirements on companies that develop and deploy AI. Trump’s executive order stated that the previous administration’s order would “stifle private sector innovation and threaten America’s technological leadership.”
Stripping government control of AI, the order called for departments and agencies to review or rescind all policies, directives, regulations, orders and other actions taken under Biden’s order that are “inconsistent with improving of America’s leadership in AI.”
Department of Government Efficiency chief and Trump adviser Elon Musk engaged in a back-and-forth with Altman on Jan. 23 on Musk’s social media platform X with both men accusing the other of being dishonest of the agreement. Musk was a co-founder and board member of Openai before leaving and suing the company, turning it into a for-profit entity run by Altman and not a nonprofit. A lawsuit by Musk over the company’s evolution that touches on the evolution of AI as a technology will be heard next month in a federal court in California.
