SoftBank and OpenAI invest 100 billion dollars in US AI infrastructure

SoftBank and OpenAI are investing heavily in the US AI infrastructure to secure global competitiveness.

1/23/2025, 11:01 AM

Eulerpool News Jan 23, 2025, 11:01 AM

SoftBank and OpenAI announced a major initiative to develop artificial intelligence infrastructure in the USA on Tuesday. The project, named "Stargate," is set to start with an initial investment of $100 billion, which could increase to as much as $500 billion over the next four years.

US President Donald Trump welcomed the initiative as "a monumental statement of confidence in America." The announcement was made at the White House, flanked by SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. Trump emphasized that Stargate "will create the physical and virtual infrastructure for the next generation of AI developments," with "gigantic data centers" being built in the process.

SoftBank assumes financial responsibility for the project, while OpenAI takes on operational management. The financing is supported, among others, by Abu Dhabi's AI fund MGX and Oracle. Microsoft, Nvidia, and SoftBank subsidiary Arm act as technology partners.

The project's first data center is currently being built in Abilene, Texas, before additional locations in other states follow. According to analysts, the project could play a key role in addressing the infrastructure challenges arising from the growing demand for computing power for AI models.

The rapid progress in AI development, driven by applications like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini, has revealed significant capacity bottlenecks in data centers in the USA in recent years. OpenAI CEO Altman emphasized that the USA urgently needs more AI-specific infrastructure to remain internationally competitive. "It is amazing how difficult it has become to realize large projects like power plants or data centers in the USA," Altman said in a recent interview.

SoftBank founder Son spoke of a "golden age" that would be ushered in with this project. Without Trump's reelection, his company would not have invested to this extent in the USA, Son further stated. The announcement led to an increase in SoftBank's stock by more than ten percent on the Tokyo stock exchange.

Parallel to the Stargate announcement, Microsoft announced that OpenAI will be able to use cloud services from other providers in the future. The previous exclusive partnership will be relaxed, with Microsoft retaining the first access right to OpenAI's cloud usage.

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