WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a private sector investment of up to $500 billion to fund artificial intelligence infrastructure.
OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle are planning 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, driving demand for specialized data centers that allow technology companies to link thousands of chips into clusters.
“They have to produce a lot of electricity and we will allow them to produce that production very easily in their own plants if they want to,” Trump said.
As energy consumption increases in the United States due to artificial intelligence data centers and the electrification of buildings and transportation, about half of the country is at greater risk of experiencing energy supply shortages in the next decade, it said. in December the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.
As a candidate in 2016, Trump promised to push a $1 trillion infrastructure bill through Congress, but failed to do so. He spoke about it often during his first term as president from 2017 to 2021, but he never made a major investment, and “Infrastructure Week” became a joke.
Oracle shares rose 7% according to the project’s initial report that same day. Shares of Nvidia, Arm Holdings and Dell also rose.
It was not immediately clear if the announcement was an update from a previously reported company.
In March 2024, The informationA technology news website, 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” that will launch in 2028.
Investment in AI has increased since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, as companies across sectors look to integrate artificial intelligence into their products and services.
