OpenAI, Oracle, and Softbank have jointly unveiled plans to boost the United States’ artificial intelligence infrastructure by opening five new data centers under the ambitious Stargate project. This brings the project’s total capacity to nearly 7 gigawatts and over $400 billion in committed investment.
The Stargate expansion also puts the companies ahead of schedule to meet their original 10-gigawatt, $500 billion commitment by the end of 2025, far ahead of the initial schedule that was announced in January this year.
The five newly announced data center sites span four states including Texas, New Mexico, Ohio, and a yet-to-be-disclosed location in the Midwest. They are strategically scattered to maximize scale and efficiency.
OpenAI and Oracle will develop the data centers located in Shackelford County in Texas, Doña Ana County in New Mexico, and an unspecified location somewhere in the Midwest.
Complementing this is a partnership with SoftBank that will “scale multiple gigawatts of AI infrastructure,” according to OpenAI. Through this partnership, SoftBank will be taking charge of two additional sites – one in Lordstown, Ohio, and another in Milam County, Texas.
They will both be designed to rapidly scale high-performance AI infrastructure on the back of SoftBank’s innovative data center designs. More importantly, these data centers will be powered by the company’s renewable energy arm, SB Energy, as it provides infrastructure that is used to power fast-build data centers.
These new pieces will join Stargate’s flagship facility located in Abilene, Texas. OpenAI says these data centers are expected to create more than 25,000 onsite jobs, with another ripple effect expected to create tens of thousands more across the entire country.
The ambitious Stargate project, dubbed “OpenAI’s overarching AI infrastructure platform” by OpenAI, is also a symbol of America’s effort to maintain its technological edge in the global AI race, with a focus on building large-scale, energy-intensive infrastructure designed to power the future of AI development.
The announcement of the project, which was made from the U.S. White House in January, was supported by President Trump. “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership and the policies of his Administration, this effort has advanced more quickly than expected and helped attract additional partners and momentum,” the ChatGPT-maker said in a blog post.
The Stargate expansion is a classic example of a convergence of strategic partnerships, groundbreaking technology, and visionary intent, which sets a precedent for how AI infrastructure projects will be undertaken in different parts of the world.
OpenAI, through its strategic partnership with Oracle and SoftBank, have made it clear that they aim to win the AI arms race by building the very architecture of AI itself, and even going a step further to develop Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
“AI can only fulfill its promise if we build the compute to power it. That compute is the key to ensuring everyone can benefit from AI and to unlocking future breakthroughs,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement. “We’re already making historic progress toward that goal through Stargate and moving quickly not just to meet its initial commitment, but to lay the foundation for what comes next.”
The launch of these data centers is also complemented by Nvidia’s recent $100 billion investment in OpenAI. These data centers will be expected to be powered by Nvidia’s GPUs, ensuring that OpenAI trains and runs its most advanced models with the best AI processors.
