Stargate, the data center project deserving of a White House event, will only serve OpenAI

Last week, OpenAI and SoftBank announced an ambitious joint venture backed by Oracle and Abu Dhabi state AI fund MGX: a new infrastructure company called The Stargate Project. After an initial $100 billion investment, the company is expected to grow that sum to as much as $500 billion, which will be destined to building energy and data center infrastructure to serve OpenAI over the next four years (or the duration of President Trump's second term in office). The project also boasts that its first site, a data center in Abilene, Texas that Crusoe has been building for Oracle since June 2023, is underway.

The Stargate Project has received substantial attention after being discussed at a White House event on Tuesday, barely a day after President Trump's inauguration. Masayoshi Son (SoftBank), Sam Altman (OpenAI), and Larry Ellison (Oracle) attended the event. The venture has also proven controversial, as it is a fully private initiative that will receive no government funding and will only serve OpenAI once completed. Despite the project being in the works since 2024, Son, Altman, and Ellison credited President Trump for helping make Stargate happen.

Even more controversially, Elon Musk, now a senior government advisor, quickly criticized Stargate, claiming that the entity did not have the money it claimed it did, and that SoftBank had less than $10 billion secured. Independent reports have since confirmed elements of these claims. The Financial Times found that OpenAI and SoftBank plan to contribute over $15 billion each and raise the remaining funds in debt and equity from their respective existing backers. Politico reported that Musk's remarks about Stargate angered some White House staff, as they were perceived as an attempt to undermine Trump's support of the initiative.

Broadly speaking, Stargate plans to reach its funding goals by splitting into an operations unit headed by OpenAI which will oversee the building and management of the planned data centers, and a financial unit headed by SoftBank, tasked with raising the capital needed to complete the data centers.