What is the Stargate Project?

The Stargate Project is a large-scale, public-private initiative focused on developing the physical and digital infrastructure needed to power next-generation artificial intelligence (AI).

Structured as Stargate LLC, a Delaware-based joint venture, the project brings together various stakeholders to coordinate the largest AI infrastructure buildout in US history. With an initial USD 100 billion investment led by SoftBank—and total commitments expected to reach USD 500 billion over four years—Stargate is designed to position the US at the forefront of AI development through unmatched scale, computing power and capital alignment.

The Stargate Project was announced at the White House alongside President Donald Trump and senior administration officials. It aims to build out a nationwide network of advanced AI data centers, starting with a flagship facility in Abilene, Texas.

It’s important to note that the Stargate Project is not affiliated with Project Stargate, the CIA’s defunct psychic research program of similar name, nor the science fiction series it inspired. This version is grounded firmly in data, energy and capital—not clairvoyance or wormholes.

The future of AI innovation depends on access to massive computational power. Right now, supply is lagging behind demand.

As advanced AI models drive breakthroughs in generative technologies, infrastructure has emerged as a critical bottleneck. The Stargate Project directly addresses this challenge by investing in next-generation systems capable of supporting large-scale AI training and deployment.

By enabling strategic scalability across sectors—from national security to healthcare—it ensures that essential workloads, whether for government or private industry, have the resources they need. It also strengthens the United States' position amid rising global competition in AI infrastructure.

More than just a buildout, the Stargate Project marks a shift in how the US government collaborates with the private sector to secure long-term US leadership in AI development. The White House has signaled support as part of its broader AI policy agenda, with executive orders, regulatory frameworks and technology partnerships helping to shape the initiative.

The Stargate Project also signals a national commitment to stay ahead in a fast-evolving landscape. The initiative is engineering future facilities to handle unprecedented compute loads, leveraging cutting-edge GPUs and energy systems operating at gigawatt scale—a magnitude comparable to small nations.

The Abilene, Texas site will deliver 1.2 gigawatts of power, making it one of the largest data centers in the world, while campuses across the US are being developed to deliver more than 5 gigawatts of total capacity.

All of this points to one goal: building the infrastructure required to enable artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a hypothetical stage in the evolution of machine learning. It describes an AI system that can match or exceed the cognitive abilities of human beings across any task. It represents the fundamental, abstract goal of AI development—a machine or software capable of replicating human intelligence.

AGI has been studied since the earliest days of artificial intelligence research, but there’s still no consensus on how to define or achieve it. The pursuit raises both philosophical and technical questions: how to define “intelligence” in a formal, universal way, and how to build models with the flexibility, adaptability and reasoning required to meet that definition.

Most of today’s systems, including applications like ChatGPT, are classified as narrow AI—highly capable within a specific domain, but unable to generalize across tasks. The Stargate Project aims to close the infrastructure gap between today’s narrow models and the potential of AGI by investing in the compute, scale and architecture needed to support more generalized systems.

The scale and ambition of the Stargate Project wouldn’t be possible without a network of financial, operational and technological partners. From chipmakers and cloud providers to investors, each organization brings a critical piece of the infrastructure puzzle.

OpenAI is the strategic architect and operational lead of the Stargate Project. Its role centers on defining the technical direction of the AI initiative and ensuring that models can scale effectively alongside national infrastructure. The company plans to co-design and co-own systems capable of hosting future AGI workloads, extending its influence beyond software into foundational infrastructure.

SoftBank’s CEO, Masayoshi Son, has publicly endorsed the Stargate Project as a strategic opportunity to align global capital with US innovation. While details beyond the initial USD 100 billion remain opaque, his backing—and role as chairman of Stargate LLC—adds both financial depth and symbolic weight.

MGX is a key equity partner in the Stargate Project. In addition to providing significant capital, MGX plays a strategic role in aligning global investment with US AI infrastructure priorities. Its participation adds an international dimension to the project’s funding base, helping ensure that the initiative can scale rapidly while maintaining financial resilience over the multi-year buildout.

In addition to its role as an equity partner, Oracle is building the architectural backbone of the Stargate Project. Its contribution focuses on delivering database systems, virtualization platforms and cloud-native tools designed to manage ultra-high-throughput AI workloads and enterprise-grade deployments.

Microsoft serves as a longstanding investor and infrastructure partner in the initiative. The company contributes its cloud-scale buildout capabilities, governance frameworks and global data center footprint—key components in translating the initiative’s ambition into operational reality.

NVIDIA will provide the GPUs for the high-performance compute infrastructure needed to support large-scale AI workloads. In fact, Oracle, a key infrastructure partner, is reportedly spending USD 40 billion on 400,000 NVIDIA GB200 chips to support the initiative.

Arm provides the underlying chip architecture for many of the processors used in AI infrastructure, enabling energy-efficient, high-performance compute at scale. Its designs help optimize AI workloads for both speed and power consumption, supporting the Stargate Project’s goal of building systems capable of sustaining large-scale training and inference.

The ambition of the Stargate Project is equally matched by its complexity. Scaling the infrastructure required to support AGI comes with significant hurdles—technical, political and logistical.

Industry reports indicate that, in Abilene, Texas, the Stargate Project will include up to 29 GE Vernova LM2500XPRESS gas turbines capable of generating roughly 986 megawatts (MW) of electricity. Permits have also been filed for a 360 MW natural gas plant, serving as both primary and backup power.

Even with these additions—which rely on fossil fuels for generation—analysts estimate that Stargate’s broader energy demands could approach 15 gigawatts across its planned installations.

These demands have prompted the development of new energy corridors and sparked regulatory tension. Texas has passed emergency measures allowing state officials to cut power to data centers in the event of grid instability—a response to the deadly 2021 winter blackout. While these policies aim to balance resilience and growth, they introduce new uncertainty and challenges for operators, including:

• Hardware supply chains: The project hinges on access to next-generation GPUs and specialized compute infrastructure—components that are in high demand and limited supply.
  
  
• Regulatory complexity: Even with executive orders, coordinating across agencies, states and private partners introduces delays and policy friction. Organizations participating in Stargate-adjacent deployments will need to navigate evolving rules around data provenance, transparency and ethical AI use.
  
  
• Bipartisan alignment: While both the Biden administration and President Trump acknowledged the need for American AI leadership, political polarization may impact long-term funding and implementation.
  
  
• Cybersecurity issues: As infrastructure scales, so do the risks. Cybersecurity will play a critical role in protecting shared compute environments, safeguarding model training data and ensuring system integrity across AI technology deployments.

As the Stargate Project focuses on scale, some research labs are exploring leaner paths. DeepSeek, for instance, demonstrated competitive performance through architectural optimization and targeted training strategies—raising questions about whether such breakthroughs always require nation-scale investment, or simply smarter design.

Despite the scale of the effort, the upside of the Stargate Project is hard to overstate. From national security gains to economic revitalization, the initiative offers a range of purported benefits that extend well beyond the data centers’ walls.

In Texas, the Abilene campus is helping to foster a new class of energy infrastructure—one designed for price-stable, low-emissions delivery. That model supports both the AI economy and broader clean energy transitions.

Meanwhile, energy corridor development near Stargate sites, reportedly backed by firms like Crusoe Energy and Engine No. 1, is creating scalable generation capacity that can evolve with demand. According to Oracle and OpenAI, the buildout of Stargate’s nationwide data center network is expected to create over 100,000 jobs across construction, operations and related sectors.

Beyond that, benefits include:

As the Stargate Project unfolds, businesses across industries will feel the ripple effects. Providers of AI services may benefit from lower training costs and increased computational availability, which can accelerate product development and deployment. In sectors such as healthcare, logistics and finance, greater access to AI infrastructure may support improvements in forecasting, diagnostics and operational efficiency.

For organizations building AI capabilities, the initiative introduces new access models that may lower technical and financial barriers. Government-backed buildouts and commercial infrastructure partnerships could enable companies of varying sizes to leverage high-performance systems without proprietary data centers.

Businesses are likely to encounter new expectations around performance, integration and compliance as development accelerates. Emerging governance frameworks and executive orders suggest a growing policy focus on AI standardization. Governance frameworks like the NIST AI Risk Management Framework will likely shape how Stargate-related systems are evaluated for trustworthiness, robustness and compliance—particularly in sensitive or regulated sectors.

The move toward shared infrastructure will also underscore the importance of data security and data compliance, particularly in multi-tenant environments. Encryption, access controls and audit mechanisms will be essential to protect proprietary models and sensitive datasets.

Ultimately, the Stargate Project reflects a broader shift in how AI is being approached: not just as a set of algorithms, but as infrastructure. This orientation positions the US to compete globally in the race toward AGI, with multi-stakeholder coordination becoming central to future development.