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OpenAI and SoftBank announced Tuesday they would launch a major U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure project, in what President Donald Trump hailed as a “declaration of confidence in America.”
The joint venture, named Stargate, plans to spend $100 billion on Big Tech infrastructure projects, increasing to up to $500 billion over the next four years, the groups said. It wasn’t immediately clear how Stargate would raise money, but one project official said it intended to bring in additional investors.
“This monumental undertaking is a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential under a new president,” President Trump said Tuesday night, along with SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. He made the remarks from the White House, accompanied by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and others.
President Trump added that Stargate “will build the physical and virtual infrastructure that will power the next generation of AI advances, including the construction of massive data centers.”
The announcement comes as tech executives try to curry favor with President Trump. President Trump wants to make big investments in the United States early in his term. The president said Stargate would create 100,000 jobs “almost immediately” and preserve America’s “future of technology.”
SoftBank will have ultimate financial responsibility for the new company, and OpenAI will be responsible for its operations. Son will become chairman of the joint venture.
Abu Dhabi’s AI-focused national fund MGX and Oracle are also funding the project, with SoftBank-owned Arm, Microsoft and Nvidia among the technology partners.
Stargate aims to increase the ability to train and run new AI models. The company will first build a data center project in Abilene, Texas (construction has already begun, the companies say), and then expand to other states.
The rapid development of AI systems over the past two years has expanded the U.S. infrastructure, with data centers in particular emerging as a bottleneck. Cutting-edge chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude require vast amounts of data and computing power to train and run.
Hussein Sajwani, the chairman of Dubai-based real estate developer Damac, said in a meeting with President Trump this month at Mar-a-Lago, a presidential resort in Florida, that he would invest at least $20 billion in U.S. data centers. announced plans to invest.
Leading figures in the AI field, including OpenAI’s Altman, argue that infrastructure improvements are essential to developing the next stage of AI models and competing with China for technological supremacy.
Altman said this month that the Trump administration could boost domestic AI companies with “American-built infrastructure and a lot of that.”
“One thing I deeply agree with the president is how difficult it has become to build things in the United States: power plants, data centers, things like that,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg. Ta.
In his inaugural address on Monday, President Trump promised that the United States was on the brink of a “thrilling new era of national success,” but he did not specifically mention AI technology.
President Trump last month called SoftBank’s separate commitment to invest $100 billion in the United States a “monumental demonstration of confidence in America’s future.” Officials say Stargate will be a key part of previously announced efforts.
“This is the beginning of a golden age,” Son said Tuesday, adding that the company would not have invested if Trump had not been reelected, a comment echoed by Ellison and Altman.
Son has long championed a comprehensive vision of what SoftBank can do with AI, from robotics to data centers, all based on his crown jewel, the UK-based semiconductor designer. It is backed by Arm, and hopes Arm will produce its own chips.
The SoftBank founder also has a large stake in OpenAI and speaks with Altman regularly.
SoftBank shares rose more than 10% in the Tokyo market on Wednesday on the news.
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Coinciding with the Stargate announcement, Microsoft announced Tuesday that it would change the structure of its contract with OpenAI to allow the startup to use the rival’s cloud computing services.
The move means Microsoft will relinquish its position as OpenAI’s exclusive cloud service provider, but will retain its right of first refusal. This follows a one-time waiver last year that allowed OpenAI to purchase cloud services from Oracle.
Microsoft said several “key elements” of its partnership with OpenAI will remain in place until the end of 2030, when the current agreement ends, including a revenue-sharing agreement.
Additional reporting by Leif Uddin in San Francisco and Alex Rogers in Washington
