WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced private sector investment of up to $500 billion to finance artificial intelligence infrastructure.
OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle plan to create a Texas-based joint venture called Stargate and have committed $100 billion initially and then up to $500 billion to Stargate over the next four years.
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Oracle’s Larry Ellison joined Trump at the White House for the launch.
The announcement on Trump’s second day in office follows the reversal of former President Joe Biden’s executive order on AI, which aimed to reduce the risks that artificial intelligence poses to consumers, workers and national security.
AI requires enormous computing power, increasing demand for specialized data centers that allow technology companies to link thousands of chips together in clusters.
“They have to produce a lot of electricity, and we will give them the ability to do that production very easily in their own factories if they want to,” Trump said.
As U.S. electricity consumption increases due to AI data centers and the electrification of buildings and transportation, about half the country is at increased risk of electricity shortages over the next decade , the North American Electric Reliability Corporation said in December.
As a candidate in 2016, Trump promised to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure bill through Congress, but he failed to do so. He addressed the topic often during his first term as president from 2017 to 2021, but never made any significant investments, and “Infrastructure Week” became a punchline.
Oracle shares rose 7% from the project’s initial report earlier today. Nvidia, Arm Holdings and Dell shares also rose.
It was not immediately clear whether the announcement was an update of a previously reported company.
In March 2024, The informationa technology news site, reported that OpenAI and Microsoft were working on plans for a $100 billion data center project that would include an artificial intelligence supercomputer also called “Stargate” scheduled to launch in 2028 .
Investments in AI have increased since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, as companies across industries look to integrate artificial intelligence into their products and services.
