Trump Announces Stargate: $500 Billion AI Infrastructure Investment in the U.S.
“Stargate” is likely to be paired with a substantial increase in the nation’s nuclear energy capacity.

President Donald Trump has continued his whirlwind pace of executive orders and announcements by introducing the Stargate Project, a massive artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure initiative that will be privately funded.
This project involves a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank, with an initial investment of $100 billion, potentially expanding to $500 billion over the next four years. “Stargate” is the name of the company that was formed to make this plan a reality.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison appeared at the White House Tuesday afternoon alongside President Donald Trump to announce the company, which Trump called the “largest AI infrastructure project in history.”
The companies will invest $100 billion in the project to start, with plans to pour up to $500 billion Stargate in the coming years. The project is expected to create 100,000 US jobs, Trump said.
Stargate will build “the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of AI,” including data centers around the country, Trump said. Ellison said the group’s first, 1 million-square foot data project is already under construction in Texas.
AI leaders have for months been sounding the alarm that more data centers — as well as the chips and electricity and water resources to run them — are needed to power their artificial intelligence ambitions in the coming years.
The announcement was tied with Trump’s “Golden Age” messaging, and the corporate heads were keen to stress the importance of this infrastructure project.
“This will be the most important project of this era,” said Altman, CEO of OpenAI.
Ellison noted that the data centers are already under construction with 10 being built so far. The chairman of Oracle suggested that the project was also tied to digital health records and would make it easier to treat diseases such as cancer by possibly developing a customized vaccine.
“This is the beginning of golden age,” said Son, referencing Trump’s statement that the U.S. would be in a “golden age” with him back in the White House.
Son, a billionaire based in Japan, already committed in December to invest $100 billion in U.S. projects over the next four years. He previously committed to $50 billion in new investments ahead of Trump’s first term, which included a large stake in the troubled office-sharing company WeWork.
I have often noted that nuclear energy currently has the highest energy capacity. It and fossil fuels are the only two civilization-worth fuel sources available to maintain the living standard we currently enjoy.
https://t.co/l1LTwpDGhi pic.twitter.com/BFQjYqmkDH
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) August 11, 2023
I have also noted that AI processes use vast amounts of energy.
For years, data centers displayed a remarkably stable appetite for power, even as their workloads mounted. Now, as the pace of efficiency gains in electricity use slows and the AI revolution gathers steam, Goldman Sachs Research estimates that data center power demand will grow 160% by 2030.
At present, data centers worldwide consume 1-2% of overall power, but this percentage will likely rise to 3-4% by the end of the decade. In the US and Europe, this increased demand will help drive the kind of electricity growth that hasn’t been seen in a generation. Along the way, the carbon dioxide emissions of data centers may more than double between 2022 and 2030.
Nuclear power is an option. In fact, Microsoft powered up the old Three Mile Island facility to power one of their AI units.
Interestingly, Trump’s executive order titled “Unleashing American Energy” specifically includes nuclear energy as one of the domestic energy resources to be developed. This order directs an immediate review of agency actions that potentially burden the development of domestic energy resources, with particular attention given to nuclear energy.
Additionally, the order instructs the US Geological Survey to consider updating its list of critical minerals, potentially including uranium, which is essential for nuclear energy production.
I suspect that our nuclear energy capacity will be substantially expanded along with our AI infrastructure.
In the meantime, enjoy the fun StarGate references if you are a fan of the show (which I am).
My first thought when I heard Trump announced Stargate pic.twitter.com/HTa5Wti4yZ
— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) January 22, 2025
Thus, the winning continues.
Great now Stargate Twitter is going to be full of AI and Trump stuff. pic.twitter.com/qE9whfjNjq
— Beth Baisch 📸 (@BethBaisch) January 21, 2025
And, finally:
For StarGate fans who MAGA. pic.twitter.com/h2WT12phMt
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) January 22, 2025

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Comments
I’m really starting to like this Masayoshi Son character. He’s a blast. All I ever read were bad things about him and SoftBank but a lot of it seems to have been made up.
He didn’t get quite the reaction when he said his line about offering to invest $100 billion, have Trump up him to 200 and now coming back with a project for $500 billion! I think it was just hard to wrap one’s mind around that figure at the moment, thinking it must have been a mistake or something. Half a trillion dollars!! Wow.
Well, a lot of this is playing out like the guy wrote in “Situational Awareness”, which is a little group of essays that I recommend people read.
I imagine this will be not such a great thing for humanity in the long run
Think Terminator.
Data processing hmm, your data
Touting mRNA vaccines individualized for your very own cancer , as if we haven’t had enough with the mRNA
Right
I think this is more about military advancement and control
You can run, but you can not hide
And who are those 100 thousand workers.
India claims it will take back 18.000 illegals but pressures for increased H1b for its country
As far as Terminator is concerned the assumption is that we figure out the conscience problem. There is no evidence we are anywhere near doing that.
AI is the biggest thing in all of human history. It has the potential for limitless good or total enslavement. It was Kissinger’s’ last warning.
I fear it will change man himself. Perhaps the last generation of truly human beings has already been born.
Don’t worry about it. It is fancy garbage. Where it will have its largest impact is in imaging.
Lots of things the fedguv promotes are fancy garbage: offshore wind, fake vaxxes, Obamacare, DEI, EVs. The common denominator is that they push them upon you with guns before they are anywhere near operationally competent. Ready or not, here they come.
AI is impacting many things, much of it good. I am not sure that this is any worse than other advancements, it is up to humanity to keep it in check just like nuclear power. Speaking of which, Iran needs a taste.
Until the next biggest thing comes along because without consciousness AI is just programming over a long period of time.
Henry Kissinger, another fine import from Germany, was about as American as apple strudel.
I am highly skeptical regarding all the rosy promises of AI.
“I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“Digital health records” and vaxxes others can have, but they’re a hard pass for me. I’d sooner trust Granny Clampett, frankly.
Don’t you badmouth Granny!
Nope, I have more respect for Granny than I do for the modern day quacks pushing their pharmaceuticals.
Hippies may have had their faults, but I’m beginning to think they were on to something with their back-to-nature movement.
Boo!
AI is garbage. Oh well. As long as we stop subsidizing EVs.
We’re at the receiving end of a full-court-press public relations onslaught.
Where are all the “No Nukes” Sierra Club lawyer-activists hiding?
Milei is planning the same to power a South American data hub. Stay tuned!
I wonder why the subterfuge? Why not just call it “Skynet” and be open about it?
Better PR to hang it on a way less dystopian franchise.
My first thought when I read the headline was, “Indeed.”
Well, it beat “Bow down before your god!” But it would be fun to trigger Democrats with that.
I’m so old I remember the Forbin Project.
There are times I wish I was still young enough to appreciate all this. I just don’t know. Maybe I should be content with approaching 80 and my increasing closeness to Christ.
This is probably a mistake. But, it would be a bigger mistake to cede AI development to the Chicoms. AI is coming. It’s probably better that we’re the industry leaders rather than someone else.
Good point. But remember on the Forbin Project movie, Colossus in America and Guardian in Russia joined forces against humanity. As long as AI comes from human knowledge and understanding there’s no telling what comes next.
Another bad idea sold by slapping a red hat on it
I want to know who thought it should be called “Stargate”? It has nothing to do with near-instantaneous travel to distant worlds. It’s about electricity for … data centers. At least come up with monikers for your project that connect to the purpose of the project, not just “I thought that TV show was really cool.”
He’s trying to duplicate Reagan’s PR win with Star Wars.
“Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has raised concerns over the financial backing of the ambitious $500 billion Stargate AI Project announced by OpenAI and SoftBank Group. Musk questioned the feasibility of the initiative, stating that SoftBank lacked the necessary funds to execute such a large-scale endeavour. “SoftBank has less than $10 billion in secured funding available,” Musk remarked, casting doubt on the project’s future.”
As long as it’s private investment and not tax dollars.
Government infrastructure spending is always a pork-fest
We can worry all we want but there’s no stopping and very little possibility of controlling A.I. Once a technology is possible it will be implemented. Period. Legal conventions to limit or control use of a particular invention have never really been completely successful, See: use of poison gas in WWI and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Pact.
Still we may as well try for some agreement among the current leading players that will at least put off “Sky-Net” et al. I would propose something along the lines of Asimov’s Laws Of Robotics for A.I. programs
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Come on Hodge, don’t you think it would be a good idea to design a machine to watch over us every hour of the day so that, victim or perpetrator, if our number comes up, they’ll find us?
Yeah, well, man proposes, but man’s ignorance disposes.
Nobody has any idea how to do that. None.