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Stargate, a high-profile artificial intelligence infrastructure project fooled by US President Donald Trump, will exclusively serve Chatgpt Maker Openai, according to people familiar with the matter.
The company planned to spend $100 billion on Great technology Infrastructure projects, with the figure reaching up to $500 billion over the next four years, Openai and SoftBank, Stargate’s two main backers said on Tuesday. Oracle and Abu Dhabi State AI Fund MGX are also founding partners.
Asset welcomed the initiative supported by Softbank Tuesday at a White House event, Openai chief Sam Altman and other tech executives called it “a resounding statement of confidence in America’s potential under a new president.”
Despite the flashy announcement, Stargate has yet to secure the funding it needs, will receive no government funding, and will only serve Openai When completed, people familiar with the initiative said.
“The intention is not to become a data center provider for the world, it is for OpenAI,” one of the people said.
Another person close to the project said it was far from a fully developed plan: “They haven’t figured out the structure, they haven’t figured out the financing, they don’t have the money committed. “
SoftBank and Openai intend to put forward more than $15 billion each for the project. The companies hope to raise a combination of equity from their existing backers, which will be used to fund Stargate. Tokyo-based Softbank will also inject existing funds into Stargate, according to one of the people.
Openai and Softbank declined to comment.
Altman has spent well over a year working to boost Openai’s access to data and computing power, a bottleneck he says must be overcome if the company is to achieve its goal of creating AI capable of surpassing humans in most cognitive skills, supplanting them in the workforce and pushing the boundaries of scientific research.
This meant looking beyond Openai exclusive relationship with Microsoft. The group, which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI and is entitled to nearly half of the start-up’s for-profit subsidiary’s profits, provides technology support to Stargate, but not equity.
Microsoft launched its own $30 billion AI Infrastructure Fund with fund manager Blackrock in September last year, and on Wednesday CEO Satya Nadella said his company would spend $80 billion dollars for infrastructure this year, separate from Stargate.
Altman had been speaking with Softbank President Masayoshi Son for as long as two years on AI projects, including a New AI deviceaccording to people familiar with the discussions.
SoftBank also invested in OpenAI in a $6.6 billion fundraising round in October that valued the startup at $157 billion, and the Financial Times reported the Japanese group planned to purchase extra $1.5 billion worth of stock in the company in November. Son and Altman began having detailed discussions about Stargate in the months leading up to this week’s announcement, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
While Altman’s infrastructure plans were in the works for more than a year, “the idea of announcing it to the White House was not in the works for (that long),” according to a person with knowledge of the project.
“There’s a real intention to do it, but the details haven’t been fleshed out,” said another person involved in the project. “People want to do splashy things in Trump’s first week in office.”
Stargate is incorporated in Delaware, with Openai, SoftBank, Oracle and MGX each taking stakes in the company. The group will appoint an independent chief executive and board of directors, according to people with knowledge of the plans.
The company would be divided into an operating unit, responsible for building and managing the data centers and led by OpenAI, and a unit responsible for raising capital, managed by SoftBank, a person familiar with the project.
Work is already underway at an initial facility in Abilene, Texas.
Data center startup Crusoe has been building this facility for Oracle since June 2023. Crusoe secured $3.4 billion in funding from Blue Owl in October to help fund its development. Oracle is expected to buy about $7 billion in chips to power the Texas site and will provide that computing power to Microsoft, which will use it to power OpenAI.
Additional reporting by David Keohane in Tokyo and Stephen Morris in Davos