OpenAI, Oracle, and Softbank Announce $500B AI Infrastructure Venture, Stargate
Tech giants have spent hundreds of billions upgrading data centers and boosting AI investments, even though the technology remains highly unprofitable and its practical use cases are still unclear for many.
But make no mistake, while the industry’s spending seems excessive, AI enthusiasts insist the opportunity is very real. Just over the horizon, they say, an artificial general intelligence (AGI) — or a more powerful, almost omniscient artificial superintelligence (ASI) awaits — capable of thrusting humanity into a post-scarcity existence, eliminating the need for human labor and solving all of our conceivable problems.
Tech workers swear this is possible — and soon. Even if their spending sounds delusional, top tech and finance leaders are outlining the costs of making that vision a reality.
In pursuit of AI God: On Tuesday, President Donald Trump welcomed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison, and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son to the White House to announce their long-rumored AI joint venture, Stargate. The project will see the three companies, along with the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates, spend hundreds of billions to build dozens of AI data centers.
- Coined “the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history” by President Trump, Stargate claims they will deploy at least $500B over the next four years.
- $100B of that funding will be available immediately, bankrolling 10 data centers already under construction, with 10 more in the works — creating over 100K jobs “almost immediately.”
Open the Door
The sheer size of Stargate makes current AI spending and proposed future spending by competitors look small in comparison. However, with critics like Elon Musk rebuffing their funding claims and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei calling it “chaotic,” all parties involved in the project will have a lot to prove.
- OpenAI, which raised the largest venture round of all time last year, still has to demonstrate that it can create the AGI and ASI technology necessary to justify its lofty $157B valuation — or at least break even after posting a $5B net loss in 2024.
- Oracle, which has only recently seen its valuation explode after years of underperforming Big Tech peers, is trying to prove it’s not a “has been” — looking to TikTok, AI, and its emerging cloud business to put it on top of tech’s biggest realignment in a generation.
- And Softbank’s Son, who once compared himself to Jesus Christ on an earnings call, is still atoning for bad investment calls that generated an $18B loss — like selling out of generational investments like Arm and Nvidia too early, plus losing billions on now-bankrupt WeWork.
Who wins? Although it pales to the $7T that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman once floated to achieve AI supremacy, Stargate could end up being one of the great works — or not. In the meantime, the project’s riches will boil down to workers responsible for building out the 500K-square-foot data centers, IT teams assembling the stacks, and chip goliath Nvidia, which is anticipated to provide the majority of compute for the project. Already the most valuable company in the world, Nvidia enters 2025 carrying the weight of the entire US market on its shoulders — or, perhaps, the offerings of those worshipping at the altar of the AI God.
