Author: Steve Holland
(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a private sector investment of up to $500 billion to fund artificial intelligence infrastructure.
OpenAI, SoftBank (TYO: ) and Oracle (NYSE: ) are planning a Texas-based joint venture called Stargate, and have invested $100 billion initially and then up to $500 billion in Stargate over the next four years.
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Oracle’s Larry Ellison joined Trump at the White House for the launch.
The announcement, on Trump’s second day in office, followed the withdrawal of former President Joe Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence, which was intended to reduce the risks artificial intelligence poses to consumers, workers and national security.
AI requires massive computing power, increasing demand for specialized data centers that allow tech companies to connect thousands of chips together in clusters.
“They need to generate a lot of electricity, and we will allow them to do that generation very easily in their own facilities if they want to,” Trump said.
As U.S. energy consumption grows due to artificial intelligence data centers and the electrification of buildings and transportation, roughly half of the country is at increased risk of power shortages in the next decade, North American Electric (NASDAQ:) Reliability Corporation said in December.
As a candidate in 2016, Trump promised to push a $1 trillion infrastructure bill through Congress, but he didn’t. He often spoke about the topic during his first term as president from 2017 to 2021, but never made a major investment, and “Infrastructure Week” became the point.
Oracle shares rose 7% on the project’s initial report earlier in the day. Nvidia (NASDAQ:), Hand Shares of Holdings (NASDAQ: ) and Dell (NYSE: ) also rose.
It was not immediately clear if the announcement was an update on the previously reported venture.
In March 2024, The Information, a technology news website, reported that OpenAI and Microsoft (NASDAQ: launch in 2028.
Investments in artificial intelligence have increased since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, as companies from various sectors seek to integrate artificial intelligence into their products and services.
