Tech heavyweights to invest $500 billion in new US AI mega-projectTech heavyweights to invest $500 billion in new US AI mega-project

The initial equity funders are SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX. SoftBank and OpenAI are described as the lead partners, with SoftBank having financial responsibility and OpenAI having operational responsibility.

Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle are also listed as initial technology partners, and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son will be the chairman.

The Stargate Project intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years which will be ploughed into building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the US, and it will begin deploying $100 billion immediately, we’re told.

“This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world. 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,” states an identical press release posted by Softbank and Open AI.

The buildout is currently underway in Texas, and the firms are evaluating potential sites across the US for more campuses, we’re told. Oracle, Nvidia, and OpenAI will help build and operate the computing system, which “builds on a deep collaboration between OpenAI and Nvidia going back to 2016 and a newer partnership between OpenAI and Oracle.”

The release also points to the existing OpenAI partnership with Microsoft – and the former will increase its ‘consumption’ of Azure with the additional compute to train models “and deliver great products and services.”

Microsoft put out a statement saying: “We are thrilled to continue our strategic partnership with OpenAI and to partner on Stargate. Today’s announcement is complementary to what our two companies have been working on together since 2019.”

The Softbank/Open AI releases grandly conclude: “All of us look forward to continuing to build and develop AI–and in particular AGI–for the benefit of all of humanity. We believe that this new step is critical on the path, and will enable creative people to figure out how to use AI to elevate humanity.”

Nigel Green, CEO of deVere Group commented on the news: “Many analysts argue the AI rally is going to dampen this year, but this news reaffirms that we’re merely in a recalibration phase, not a revolution in market leadership. AI is not a fleeting trend—it’s the foundation of the future. Investors who fail to recognize this risk missing out on one of the most transformative opportunities of our time.

“Analysts who dismiss AI as yesterday’s story are missing the bigger picture. Trump’s AI initiative is a wake-up call to the immense and ongoing potential of artificial intelligence. The time to build exposure to the defining economic shift of our era is today.”

Whichever way you slice it, what this represents is an absolutely huge amount of resources being directed towards US AI development – dwarfing similarly motivated schemes in the UK. Though not everyone is cheering it along – for whatever reason, Elon Musk took to X to say:

The US state seems fully behind the project in a time when the notion of AI leadership has become strongly politicised.    

MIT Technology Review reports that OpenAI spent $1.76 million on government lobbying in 2024 and $510,000 in the last three months of the year alone, according to a new disclosure filed on January 22. This, the article states, is a significant jump from 2023, when the company spent $260,000.

Freshly inaugurated President Trump made a statement from the White House on Tuesday evening alongside SoftBank chair Masayoshi Son, OpenAI chief Sam Altman and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, reports the FT. “This monumental undertaking is a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential under a new president,” he said, adding that Stargate would build the “physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of advancements in AI, and this will include the construction of colossal data centres.”

Trump also posted on X: “In total, before the end of my first full business day in Washington and the White House, we've already secured nearly $3 trillion of new investments in the United States. And probably, that's going to be six or seven by the end of the week.”

Last week departing President Biden issued an executive order called ‘Executive Order on Advancing United States Leadership in Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure’, which was also around the idea of expanding US AI infrastructure – though that bit of legislation tried to perform a balancing act between pursuing such an expansion with the sustainability concerns that arise from building a load more energy-hungry data centres.

As the US looks to be putting the pedal to the metal in this sector with new “colossal data centres”, how much of that latter sentiment survives the new administration remains to be seen.