Donald Trump has unveiled a massive AI project called Stargate, which aims to strengthen the country’s dominance in artificial intelligence.
The project is a collaboration between several leading tech companies and is said to involve an unprecedented investment in AI infrastructure in the coming years.
Stargate is a joint venture between US-based OpenAI and Oracle and Japan’s Softbank. An initial investment of USD 100 billion is planned, which may eventually increase to USD 500 billion over the next four years, making it one of the largest single technology investments in history.
The project will focus on building data centers and the necessary power generation for AI development, starting in the state of Texas. Trump himself describes the venture as “the largest AI infrastructure project in history” and according to the President, the project will create at least 100,000 new jobs.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, who attended the press conference with Trump, expressed that “this will be the most important project of this era” and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison revealed that the project is already up and running and data centers are under construction.
– We will see diseases get cured at an unprecedented rate. We will be amazed at how quickly we’re curing this cancer and that one – and heart disease, Altman added, with Ellison agreeing.
– Little fragments of those [cancer] tumors float around in your blood. So you can do early cancer detection. If you can do it using AI, you can do early cancer detection with a blood test and using AI to look at the blood test.
Many tech giants involved
Several other tech giants are involved in Stargate, with Microsoft, Nvidia and UK chipmaker Arm mentioned as key partners, and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son will serve as chairman of the project.
According to a statement from OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia and OpenAI will “closely collaborate to build and operate this computing system”. Softbank is said to have financial responsibility over Stargate, while OpenAI is responsible for the purely operational running.
Announcing The Stargate Project
The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States. We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately. This infrastructure will secure…
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 21, 2025
The project also has ambitious targets in terms of computing power and energy needs. Stargate is expected to require several gigawatts of electricity consumption, which is equivalent to the energy needs of several major data centers today. One of the biggest challenges for the project is also to design a system that can handle the huge amount of heat that will be generated.
It is further stated that Nvidia’s new Blackwell GPU architecture will play a central role in Stargate. These GPUs offer up to 1.4 exaflops of AI performance, which is said to be crucial for the ambitious machine learning models planned for the project.
“Big money and high quality people”
Donald Trump has also pledged to facilitate the project in various ways and emphasized that the government is strongly committed to ensuring US dominance in AI technology.
– So, put that name down in your books because I think you’re going to hear a lot about it in the future, a new American company that will invest USD 500 billion at least in AI infrastructure in the United States and very, very quickly, moving very rapidly, creating over 100,000 American jobs almost immediately.
– It’s big money and high quality people involved… This grand project is a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential, the President himself proclaimed as the project was unveiled.
AI as a mass surveillance tool?
While expectations for the AI initiative are high, some critics also express concern about Trump’s close relationship with the tech industry and how the US risks moving in a more technocratic direction during his presidency.
Others point out that several of the actors involved seem to advocate a rather totalitarian mass surveillance society. It is noted, for example, that Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest men, recently described a future in which everything citizens do is monitored and recorded with the help of artificial intelligence.
Oracle’s Larry Ellison says a surveillance system of police body cams, cameras on cars and autonomous drones, all monitored by AI, will constantly record and report on police and citizens, leading everyone to be on their best behavior pic.twitter.com/RAq5XGaNmZ
— Tsarathustra (@tsarnick) September 15, 2024
– Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on. Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there’s a problem, AI will report the problem and report it to the appropriate person, he predicted.
– There are so many opportunities to exploit AI.