Donald Trump announced a “monumental” round of investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure, backed by some of the biggest tech firms in the US.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Oracle’s Larry Ellison, appeared with President Trump in the White House yesterday to unveil the Stargate Project.
The company will start with an initial $100bn investment round to build out extra AI data centres, but the eventual investment could reach $500bn.
“The buildout is currently underway, starting in Texas, and we are evaluating potential sites across the country for more campuses as we finalize definitive agreements,” OpenAI said.
Trump said that this “monumental undertaking” was a “resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential under a new president”.
Stargate’s initial equity funders are Softbank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX. Softbank will have financial responsibility for the company and Masayoshi Son, the firm’s chief executive, will act as its chair.
Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, and OpenAI are the key initial technology partners.
“This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world,” OpenAI said in a statement.
“This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.”
Investors have high hopes for the potential of AI to revolutionise the economy and contribute to a resurgence in productivity growth.
However, the power-hungry technology has been constrained by a lack of infrastructure, in particular data centres.
Altman has previously expressed his frustration at the difficulty in building key pieces of infrastructure to support AI, warning that it could frustrate the US’s competitive advantage.
“It is wild how difficult it has become to build things in the United States. Power plants, data centres, any of that kind of stuff,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg.
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