The parade of Big Tech CEOs through the White House continued on Tuesday as the CEOs of OpenAI and Oracle, joined by the CEO of SoftBank, joined newly inaugurated President Trump to announce the launch of Stargate, a joint venture that will invest at least $500 billion over the next four years in developing AI infrastructure in the U.S.
The new company is being funded by SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and Abu Dhabi fund MGX, with SoftBank and OpenAI serving as the lead partners for the project — SoftBank handling the finances and OpenAI taking charge of operations. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son will be the Chairman of the company. In addition to OpenAI, Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Oracle will all serve as technology partners in the company, which will work to build out the physical and virtual infrastructure necessary to power the next generation of advancements in AI.
In the official announcement of the partnership, OpenAI and SoftBank promised that the project would not only secure America’s leadership in the development of AI, but also “support the re-industrialization” of the U.S. and “provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.” At the press conference, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that advances in AI will mean “diseases get cured at an unprecedented rate,” while SoftBank’s Son said that the ultimate goal was the development of artificial superintelligence that will “solve the issues that mankind would never ever have thought that we could solve. This is the beginning of our golden age,” according to reporting from Just Security.
For his part, Trump said the endeavor will create more than 100,000 jobs. “AI seems to be very hot,” Trump said at the press conference. “It seems to be the thing that a lot of smart people are looking at very strongly. And our country will be prospering like never before. It is going to be the golden age of America.”
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Things will kick off with an initial $100 billion investment focused on a build-out of a data center already underway in Abilene, Texas, with Stargate evaluating other potential sites across the country for more campuses. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said at the press conference that the ultimate goal will be 20 data centers across the country, each spanning half a million square feet.
“All of us look forward to continuing to build and develop AI — and in particular AGI [artificial general intelligence] —for the benefit of all of humanity,” concluded the OpenAI and SoftBank statement. “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.”
