Stargate: $500 billion for AI infrastructure

On January 21, 2025, the Stargate Project was announced: an investment of up to $500 billion in AI data centers in the United States — one of the largest infrastructure plans in tech history.

Who's behind it

OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and investor MGX are leading the project, with an initial tranche of $100 billion. The goal is to build enough computing power for the next generations of AI models, with data centers spread across the US.

Computing power as a weapon

Stargate underscored that AI has also become an infrastructure, chip, and energy challenge. Whoever has the most GPUs and power can train the largest models. This made computing power a strategic and geopolitical asset.

Questions about feasibility

Critics raised concerns about the financing, energy requirements, and environmental impact of such data centers. Yet Stargate set the tone for a year in which AI infrastructure took center stage.