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Stargate, a top-class infrastructure project for artificial intelligence that was propagated by Donald Trump this week, will only serve the Chatgpt manufacturer Openaai.
The company planned to spend $ 100 billion Great technology Openaai and Softbank, the two main supporters from Stargate, said on Tuesday that the number for infrastructure projects will increase to up to $ 500 billion in the next four years. Oracle and the state AI fund MGX from Abu Dhabi are also founding partners.
Trump card praised the initiative supported by Softbank On Tuesday at an event in the White House, in which Openai boss Sam Altman and other technology managers took part, as “a resolved declaration of confidence in America’s potential among a new president”.
Despite the conspicuous announcement, Stargate has not yet secured the necessary financing, no state financing will receive and only serve Openai As soon as the initiative has been completed, the people familiar with the initiative said.
“The intention is not to become a data center provider for the world, but for Openaai,” said one of the people.
Another person who is close to the project said it was far from being a sophisticated plan: “You did not find out the structure, you did not find out the financing, you did not provide the funds.”
Softbank and Openaai want to provide more than $ 15 billion for the project. The companies hope to raise a combination of equity from their existing donors and debts that are used to finance Stargate. According to one of the people, the soft bank based in Tokyo will also be in stargate.
Openai and Softbank rejected a statement.
Altman spent well over a year to improve the access of Openai to data and computing power. In his opinion, this bottleneck must be overcome if the company wants to achieve its goal of creating a AI that is able to exceed people in most cognitive skills and replace it in the workforce and the limits of scientific research to expand.
That meant to take a look beyond the exclusive relationship between Openai with Microsoft. The group, which has invested $ 13 billion in Openaai and is entitled to almost half of the profit-oriented subsidiary of the start-up, provides Stargate with technological support, but does not provide any capital.
Microsoft launched its own AI infrastructure fund in September last year with the fund manager Blackrock in the amount of $ 30 billion, and on Wednesday CEO Satya Nadella said that his company would be $ 80 billion for the infrastructure this year spend.
Altman had spoke to the chairman of Softbank, Masayoshi Son, about AI projects for two years, including A New AI deviceSo people who are familiar with the discussions.
Softbank also invested in October in the amount of $ 6.6 billion in Openaai, which rated the start-up with $ 157 billion, and the Financial Times reported on the Japanese group planned to buy an additional Shares of the company worth $ 1.5 billion in November. According to two people with direct knowledge of the matter, Son and Altman began to have detailed discussions about Stargate in the months before the announcement of this week.
While Altman’s infrastructure plans have been in the works for well over a year, “the idea of announcing them in the White House was not yet (long) in progress,” said a person with knowledge of the project.
“There is a real intention to do this, but the details have not yet been specified,” said another person who was involved in the project. “People want to do striking things from Trump’s term in the first week.”
Stargate is entered in Delaware, with Openai, Softbank, Oracle and MGX taking shares in the company. According to people who are familiar with the plans, the group will appoint an independent chairman and board member.
The company would be divided into an operational unit commissioned to build and operate the data centers and is managed by Openaai, and a unit that is responsible for the procurement of capital and is managed by Softbank, said a person familiar with the project.
Working on a first facility in Abilene, Texas, is already underway.
The data center startup Crusoe has been building this system for Oracle since June 2023. In October, Crusoe secured a financing of $ 3.4 billion from Blue OWL to finance the development. Oracle is expected to buy chips worth around $ 7 billion in order to operate the location in Texas and will pass on this computing power to Microsoft, which it will use for the operation of Openai.
Additional reporting by David Keohane in Tokyo and Stephen Morris in Davos
