As OpenAI launches $500B “Stargate” project, critics express skepticism

On Tuesday, OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX announced plans to form Stargate, a new company that will invest $500 billion in AI computing infrastructure across the United States over four years. The announcement came during a White House meeting with President Donald Trump, who called it the “largest AI infrastructure project in history.”

However, the origins of the Stargate project extend back to 2024, prior to Trump beginning his second term in office, and skeptics have begun to take aim at the numbers announced.

OpenAI says the goal of Stargate is to kickstart building more data centers to expand computing capacity for current and future AI projects, including OpenAI’s goal of “AGI,” which the company defines as a highly autonomous AI system that “outperforms humans at most economically valuable work.”

“This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world,” claimed OpenAI in a press 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.”

On Tuesday, Altman appeared at a White House press conference to announce Stargate alongside President Trump, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. During his turn at the microphone, Altman said he thinks Stargate represents “the most important project of this era,” allowing AGI to emerge in the United States. He believes that future AI technology could create hundreds of thousands of jobs. “We wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President,” Altman added.

Responding to off-camera questions from Trump about AI’s potential to spur scientific development, Altman said he believes AI will accelerate the discoveries for cures of diseases like cancer and heart disease.

OpenAI says that SoftBank will handle financial operations for Stargate while OpenAI manages technical operations. Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s CEO, will serve as chairman. The partnership includes technology collaborations with Arm, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Notably, MGX is part of Abu Dhabi’s push into AI investments, backed by substantial sovereign wealth from the United Arab Emirates.

The new Stargate company will reportedly start with $100 billion, which will be used to construct data centers and computing systems. Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison mentioned during the press conference that the new company has already begun building its first facility, a large data center in Abilene, Texas. Notably, the US government has not announced any government dollars directly invested in the project.

The Stargate announcement wasn’t Trump’s only major AI-related move this week. It follows the newly inaugurated president’s reversal of a 2023 Biden executive order on AI risk monitoring and regulation.

An older project with a Trump stamp of approval

Despite the Trump tie-in for the most recent announcement, the “Stargate” name and some elemental aspects of the project trace their origins to last year. In March 2024, The Information and Reuters reported that Microsoft and OpenAI jointly planned a $100 billion supercomputer called “Stargate,” which would be the final part of a five-phase plan set to launch in 2028.

Since then, some gaps have begun to appear between Microsoft and OpenAI’s multi-billion-dollar partnership. On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that OpenAI may now seek cloud providers for its AI services outside of Microsoft’s Azure datacenters, although Microsoft still has right of first refusal to provide services. This allowance comes at an opportune time for OpenAI’s new Stargate venture, of which Microsoft is not joint owner.