WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump on Jan. 21 announced $500 billion in private sector investment to build artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure in the United States.
OpenAI, Softbank, and Oracle will invest in the infrastructure through their joint venture, Stargate.
Trump described it as the “largest AI infrastructure project by far in history.”
Speaking during a press conference at the White House, the president said that the new American company will invest at least $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the United States, creating in the short term 100,000 American jobs.
“This monumental undertaking is a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential under a new President,” Trump said. “This is the money that normally would have gone to China or other countries.”
SoftBank’s billionaire CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison joined Trump during the announcement at the White House.
Trump said, Stargate is “building the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of advancements in AI, and this will include the construction of colossal data centers.”
Speaking at the event, Ellison stated that the data centers are now under construction in Texas and will expand to other areas throughout the country.
He emphasized the need for artificial intelligence in health care and early cancer detection.
“This is the beginning of our golden age,” Son said.
He noted that the new company, Stargate, “will immediately start deploying $100 billion” with the goal of increasing that investment amount to $500 billion within the next four years.
“This is going to be the most important project of this era,” Altman added.
The new joint venture is the latest organization to invest in AI infrastructure in the United States after Trump’s victory in the November election.
On Jan. 7, days before taking office, Trump announced that Emirati billionaire businessman Hussain Sajwani committed to a $20 billion foreign investment to construct new data centers across the United States.
Sajwani, the founder of the property development company DAMAC, appeared at a press conference with Trump at Mar-a-Lago club.
“For the last four years, we’ve been waiting for this moment, and we’re planning to invest $20 billion, and even more than that, if the opportunity the market allows us,” Sajwani told reporters.
Trump earlier pledged to expedite the permit process if businesses or individuals invest at least $1 billion in the U.S. economy.
From his Mar-a-Lago residence, Trump and SoftBank’s Son promised that the hefty investment would create at least 100,000 jobs, focusing on AI and related infrastructure.
“My confidence level in the economy of the United States has tremendously increased with his victory,” Son stated.
Son and Trump made a similar announcement shortly after Trump’s 2016 election victory. The SoftBank chief had agreed to invest $50 billion in the United States and create 50,000 jobs.
American technology companies plan to spend billions this year to accelerate their AI capacity.
Brad Carson, co-founder and president of Americans for Responsible Innovation, said that Trump is taking action to remove roadblocks in AI development.
“Trump is signaling he wants to clear the way for the United States to lead on AI innovation,” he said in a statement. “This is the first step he’s taking to tackle growing infrastructure and energy needs that are bottlenecking innovation, but it’s certainly not the last.”
On Monday, Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States.
Soon after his inauguration, the president took dozens of executive actions, including repealing President Joe Biden’s 2023 AI order, which sought to establish a framework for federal oversight of AI developers.
