AIster · The agentic age · M&A & deals
OpenAI and partners launch the $500 billion Stargate Project
The pledge set the benchmark for AI infrastructure spending in 2025
Key facts
- Date
- 21 Jan 2025
- Era
- The agentic age
- Interest
- M&A & deals
- Threads
- Compute, Labs & people
- Announced
- 21 Jan 2025, the White House
- Amount
- $500bn over four years, $100bn immediately
- Equity funders
- SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX
- Chair
- Masayoshi Son (SoftBank)
The announcement
On 21 January 2025 President Donald Trump hosted OpenAI's Sam Altman, SoftBank's Masayoshi Son and Oracle's Larry Ellison at the White House to launch the Stargate Project. The partners' own statement described it as “a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years” building AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States, with $100 billion to be deployed immediately.
Who is involved
The initial equity funders were SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX. SoftBank took financial responsibility and OpenAI operational responsibility, with Son as chairman. Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle and OpenAI were named as the key technology partners. The build-out started in Texas, with other sites under evaluation. The statement also said OpenAI would continue to increase its consumption of Microsoft's Azure cloud under their existing partnership.
The partners said the project would “secure American leadership in AI” and “create hundreds of thousands of American jobs”. Trump framed it as a contest with China: “What we want to do is keep it in this country. China is a competitor.” Son called it the “beginning of our golden age”.
Doubts
Within hours, Elon Musk, who runs the rival xAI, posted that “They don't actually have the money” and claimed SoftBank had far less than $10 billion secured. Altman replied that he was “Wrong, as you surely know.” The exchange became an early marker of how contested the financing of the AI build-out would be.
Why it matters
The size of the pledge set a benchmark for AI infrastructure spending in 2025. When OpenAI closed its $40 billion funding round at the end of March, TechCrunch reported that about $18 billion was earmarked for Stargate. The announcement came one day after DeepSeek released R1, whose low reported costs led some investors to question whether spending on this scale was necessary. Stargate still stands as an early public measure of how much the industry planned to spend on AI infrastructure, and of how open to question the funding was.
Questions people ask
What is the Stargate Project?
Stargate is a company announced on 21 January 2025 by OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle and MGX to build AI data centres for OpenAI in the United States. It said it intended to invest $500 billion over four years, beginning with $100 billion immediately, starting in Texas.
Who is funding Stargate?
The initial equity funders were SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX. SoftBank has financial responsibility and OpenAI operational responsibility, and SoftBank's Masayoshi Son is chairman. Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle and OpenAI were named as technology partners.
Sources
- SoftBank Group, Announcing The Stargate Project, 2025-01-22
- Al Jazeera, Trump announces $500bn ‘Stargate’ venture to build up AI infrastructure, 2025-01-22
- TechCrunch, Elon Musk and Sam Altman take to social media to fight over Stargate, 2025-01-22