Written by Steve Holland
(Reuters) – US President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday the investment of up to $500 billion in the private sector to finance artificial intelligence infrastructure.
OpenAI, SoftBank (TYO:) and Oracle (NYSE:) plan to create a joint venture in Texas 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 comes on Trump's second day in office after reversing former President Joe Biden's executive order on artificial intelligence, which was intended to reduce the risks that artificial intelligence poses to consumers, workers and national security.
Artificial intelligence requires massive computing power, which increases demand for specialized data centers that enable technology companies to link thousands of chips together in clusters.
“They have to produce a lot of electricity, and we will make it possible for them to do that production very easily in their own factories if they want to,” Trump said.
With US energy consumption rising from artificial intelligence data centers and the electrification of buildings and transportation, nearly half the country is at increased risk of energy supply shortages in the next decade. American Electric (NASDAQ:) Reliability Company said in December.
When Trump was a candidate in 2016, he promised to push a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill through Congress, but he never did. He talked about the topic a lot during his first term as president from 2017 to 2021, but he never made major investments, and “Infrastructure Week” became a hot topic.
Shares of Oracle rose 7% after the initial report on the project earlier in the day. Nvidia (NASDAQ:), arm Holdings (NASDAQ:) and Dell (NYSE:) shares also rose.
It was not immediately clear if this announcement was an update to a previously reported project.
In March 2024, The Information, a technology news website, reported that OpenAI and Microsoft (NASDAQ:) were working on plans for a $100 billion data center project that would include an AI supercomputer also called “Stargate” scheduled to launch in 2028.
Investment in AI has soared since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, as companies across sectors seek to integrate AI into their products and services.
