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OpenAI and SoftBank said on Tuesday they planned to launch a massive new US artificial intelligence infrastructure project, a move that Donald Trump hailed as a “statement of faith in America”.
The joint venture, called Stargate, is looking to spend $100 billion on Big Tech infrastructure projects, growing to $500 billion over the next four years, the groups said late Tuesday. It wasn’t immediately clear how Stargate would get funding, but a person involved in the project said they intended to bring in additional investors.
“This monumental undertaking is a powerful statement of faith in America’s potential under a new president,” Trump said from the White House on Tuesday evening, flanked by Son, OpenAI chief Sam Altman and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
Trump added that Stargate will build “the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of AI advances, and that will include building colossal data centers.”
The announcement comes as tech executives look to court Trump, who is eager to score major U.S. investment wins early in his term. The president said Stargate will create 100,000 jobs “almost immediately” and hold the “future of technology” in America.
SoftBank has ultimate financial responsibility for the new company, with OpenAI taking on operational responsibility. Tokyo-based SoftBank chairman Masayoshi Son will head the joint venture.
Abu Dhabi’s state-owned artificial intelligence fund MGX and Oracle are also providing funding for the project, while Arm, Microsoft and SoftBank-owned Nvidia are technology partners.
Stargate aims to increase the capacity to train and run new AI models. It will first build a data center project in Abilene, Texas — construction of which is already underway, according to the companies — before expanding to other states.
The rapid development of AI systems over the past two years has stretched American infrastructure, with data centers emerging as a particular bottleneck. More advanced models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini chatbots, and Anthropic’s Claude require large amounts of data and computing power to train and run.
“This project will not only support the reindustrialization of the United States, but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies,” OpenAI said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Hussain Sajwani, chairman of Dubai-based property developer Damac, announced plans to invest at least $20 billion in US data centers in a meeting with Trump at his Mar-a resort. -Lago in Florida.
Leading figures in the AI sector, including OpenAI’s Altman, have argued that better infrastructure is essential for developing the next phase of AI models and competing with China for technology dominance.
Altman said earlier this month the Trump administration could boost domestic AI companies with “US-built infrastructure and lots of it.”
“The thing I agree with the president about is that it’s difficult how difficult it has become to build things in the United States. Power plants, data centers, anything like that,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg.
In his inaugural address on Monday, Trump promised that the US was on the verge of an “exciting new era of national success”, although he did not mention any specific AI technologies.
Last month, Trump called a separate pledge by SoftBank to invest $100 billion in the US “a monumental demonstration of faith in America’s future.” A person familiar with the matter said Stargate would be an important part of that previously announced $100 billion commitment.
“This is the beginning of a golden age,” Son said Tuesday, adding that the company would not have made the investment if Trump had not won re-election, comments echoed by Ellison and Altman.
Son has long espoused an overarching vision of what SoftBank can do in AI, from robotics to data centers, all backed by its crown jewel, UK-based semiconductor designer Arm, which he wants to see it manufacture its own chips. The SoftBank founder has also taken a significant stake in OpenAI and speaks regularly with Altman.
Additional reporting by Rafe Uddin and Alex Rogers
