OpenAI says that it will team up with Japanese conglomerate SoftBank and with Oracle, along with others, to build multiple data centers for AI in the U.S.
The joint venture, called The Stargate Project, will begin with a large data center project in Texas and eventually expand to other states. The companies expect to commit $100 billion to Stargate initially and pour up to $500 billion into the venture over the next four years.
They promise it will create “hundreds of thousands” of jobs and “secure American leadership in AI.”
“The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to [build] new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States,” OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank said in a joint 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.”
The companies made the announcement during a press conference at the White House on Tuesday, where President Donald Trump spoke about plans for investment in U.S. infrastructure. SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison were in attendance.
Microsoft is also involved in Stargate as a tech partner. So are Arm and Nvidia. Middle East AI fund MGX will join SoftBank in its investment; MGX’s first public deal was an investment in OpenAI.
SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle are also listed as “initial equity investors” in Stargate.
“SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners for Stargate, with SoftBank having financial responsibility and OpenAI having operational responsibility,” the statement continued. “Masayoshi Son will be the chairman [of Stargate] […] As part of Stargate, Oracle, Nvidia, and OpenAI will closely collaborate to build and operate this computing system.”
The data centers could house chips designed by OpenAI someday. The company is said to be aggressively building out a team of chip designers and engineers, and working with semiconductor firms Broadcom and TSMC to create an AI chip for running models that could arrive as soon as 2026.
SoftBank is already an investor in OpenAI, having reportedly committed $500 million toward the AI startup’s last funding round and an additional $1.5 billion to allow OpenAI staff to sell shares in a tender offer. Oracle, meanwhile, has an ongoing deal with OpenAI to supply AI computing resources.
Softbank also earlier pledged to invest $100 billion in the U.S. over the next four years. Son and Trump have had a close working relationship since 2016, during Trump’s first term, when Son announced that SoftBank would invest $50 billion in U.S. startups and create 50,000 jobs.
The Information previously reported that OpenAI was negotiating with Oracle to lease an entire data center in Abilene, Texas — a data center that could could reach nearly a gigawatt of electricity by mid-2026. (A gigawatt is enough to power roughly 750,000 small homes.) Data center startup Crusoe Energy was said to be involved in the project, which was estimated to cost around $3.4 billion.
That Abilene site will be Stargate’s first site, and OpenAI says that Stargate is “evaluating potential sites across the country for more campuses as [it finalizes] definitive agreements.”
It’s unclear what connection, if any, Stargate has to a rumored partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI to spin up a $100 billion supercomputer. TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for additional information.
Last year, The Information reported that Microsoft and OpenAI would build a series of data centers for AI beginning in five stages over the next several years, culminating in Stargate: a 5-gigawatt facility spanning several hundred acres of land. Stargate was expected to take between five and six years to complete, according to The Information. In the lead-up to its completion, Microsoft had reportedly planned to launch a smaller-scope data center for OpenAI around 2026.
A number of tech leaders have called for the U.S. to up its investment in data centers, particularly as the AI industry continues to grow at an explosive pace. AI systems require enormous server banks to develop and run at scale.
Goldman Sachs estimates that AI will represent about 19% of data center power demand by 2028. OpenAI has blamed a lack of available compute for delaying its products, and compute capacity has reportedly become a source of tension between the AI company and Microsoft, its close collaborator and major investor.
Microsoft, which recently announced it is on track to spend $80 billion on AI data centers, said in a recent blog post that the company’s success depends on “new partnerships founded on large-scale infrastructure investments.” In an interview with Bloomberg, Altman said that he believes it is urgent that what he perceives as barriers to building additional data center infrastructure in the U.S. be cleared.
“The thing I really deeply agree with [President Trump] on is, it is wild how difficult it has become to build things in the United States,” Altman said in that interview. “Power plants, data centers, any of that kind of stuff. I understand how bureaucratic cruft builds up, but it’s not helpful to the country in general.”
Massive data center projects have vocal critics who say that data centers often create fewer jobs than promised and tend to have severe environmental impacts. Data centers are typically water hungry, placing a strain on regions with insufficient water resources, and their high power requirements have forced some utilities to lean heavily on fossil fuels.
Those concerns don’t appear to be slowing investments any. Per a McKinsey report, capital spending on procurement and installation of mechanical and electrical systems for data centers could eclipse $250 billion in the next five years.
In January, Trump announced that Hussain Sajwani, an Emirati billionaire businessman who founded the property development giant DAMAC Properties, will invest $20 billion in new data centers across the U.S. Industry insiders have expressed skepticism of the deal’s concreteness, however.
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Alexandr Wang, the CEO of Scale AI, has taken out a full-page ad in The Washington Post asking the Trump administration to invest more in AI.
Wang, who attended Trump’s inauguration on Monday like many other tech CEOs, posted a copy of the ad on X, which reads “Dear President Trump, America must win the AI War.”
In the full letter published online, Wang explains that the U.S. should take five broad steps to win what he considers an “AI war” against China.
Scale, whose core business is data labeling and processing for AI projects at large organizations, was valued at $13.8 billion last year.
Wang wants the U.S. government to emulate tech giants by spending more on data and compute. He also recommends the U.S. review its own regulations to ensure there’s plenty of AI-related jobs in the future.
Wang further calls for making federal agencies “AI-ready” by 2027, launching an “aggressive” plan for cheap electricity that can be consumed by AI-centric data centers, and offered ideas on how to implement some AI safety measures.
Scale could benefit from at least some of these recommendations, like a surge in U.S. government spending on data. Scale already counts the U.S. government as a customer and is reportedly part of plans for a U.S. defense startup consortium.
More friendly regulations and encouraging AI-related jobs could help Scale as well, as it relies heavily on contract workers, a few of whom have recently filed lawsuits alleging they are misclassified.
Wang, however, has framed the recommendations as part of an effort to keep the U.S. ahead of China in AI. “We are in a new kind of technological arms race,” his letter states. “The Chinese government is investing in AI at an unprecedented pace.”
Chinese models like DeepSeek have been getting attention for their strong performance on certain industry benchmarks. Wang’s letter says China is now catching up to the U.S. after being at least a year behind, comments echoed by other AI leaders.
But Wang’s framing of U.S.-China AI competition as a “war” has raised concern from some.
“This is a horrible framing – we are not at war. We are all in this together and if we make AI development into a war we are likely to all die,” posted Emmett Shear, the ex-Twitch CEO who was briefly OpenAI’s CEO in 2023.
How the Trump administration responds remains to be seen. So far, President Trump’s main action on AI has been to revoke his predecessor’s executive order on AI, which created guidance for companies to help correct flaws and biases in their models.
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The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory commission spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk recommending deep cuts to federal agencies, could soon become more official, should an executive order signed by President Donald Trump pass legal muster.
On Monday evening, Trump signed an order that renames the U.S. Digital Service (USDS), which was created in 2014 by former President Barack Obama to “change [the] government’s approach to technology,” as the U.S. DOGE Service (USDS). (Note the identical acronyms.)
The USDS is set to have around 20 employees, Trump said during the executive order signing ceremony. Despite its name, it isn’t a federal executive department, which would require an act of Congress to create.
The executive order instructs U.S. agency heads to consult with USDS to form “DOGE Teams” of “at least” four employees within their agency within 30 days. Teams will typically include a DOGE Team lead, engineer, HR specialist, and attorney, per the executive order, and work with the USDS and agency in which they’re housed to implement Trump’s DOGE plan.
Among other things, the executive order establishes a “software modernization” plan to improve government network infrastructure and IT systems, and gives the USDS access to “unclassified” agency records, software systems, and IT systems “consistent with law.”
The executive order also creates a temporary organization, the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization, dedicated to “advancing [President Trump’s] 18-month DOGE agenda.” The organization is set to terminate on July 4, 2026.
Trump previously said that DOGE’s work must be completed by “no later” than July 4, 2026 — before the Ohio gubernatorial election in November 2026.
It remains to be seen whether the executive order survives coming courtroom battles. No fewer than three lawsuits have been filed in federal court alleging that the Musk-led DOGE violates the transparency requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), a 1972 law that requires federal advisory committees to hold meetings publicly and represent “balanced” perspectives.
Trump announced DOGE, which was to be co-led by Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, late last year. Ramaswamy has since left DOGE after reportedly clashing with Musk, and is said to be planning to announce a run for Ohio governor next week.
Musk has suggested that DOGE could help to cut the U.S. federal budget by up to $2 trillion through measures such as reducing waste, abolishing redundant agencies, and downsizing the federal workforce. He has since backtracked on that goal, however, and many experts believe it to be unrealistic.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the Trump team and officials from DOGE have inquired about abolishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and combining and restructuring the FDIC, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and Federal Reserve. Separately, Musk has also proposed eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the agency charged with implementing and enforcing consumer protection laws and issuing guidance for consumer financial institutions.
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During his first day in office, President Donald Trump revoked a 2023 executive order signed by former President Joe Biden that sought to reduce the potential risks AI poses to consumers, workers, and national security.
Biden’s executive order directed the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to author guidance that helps companies identify — and correct for — flaws in models, including biases. The executive order also required developers of AI systems to share the results of safety tests with the U.S. government before they were released to the public.
Critics allied with Trump argued that the executive order’s reporting requirements were onerous and effectively forced companies to disclose their trade secrets. During his campaign, Trump promised policies that would “support AI development rooted in free speech and human flourishing” — but declined to go into detail.
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