SoftBank Group, OpenAI and Oracle are forming a half-a-trillion dollar venture in the United States that will develop artificial intelligence infrastructure with warp-speed-type support from the U.S. government.
SoftBank Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son will be the chairman of Stargate, the new company being formed, while SoftBank will be responsible for financial management of the venture.
Arm Holdings, a Nasdaq-listed subsidiary of SoftBank, will provide chip technology. Microsoft, Nvidia and Oracle will also be key vendors.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced the formation of Stargate at a news conference on Tuesday, his first full day as president, at the White House. He was joined by Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison.
The president said it will be the largest AI infrastructure ever built and that it will help to counter growing technology threats from China and other countries.
“Put that name down in your books, because I think you're going to hear a lot about it in the future,” Trump said. “A new American company that will invest $500 billion, at least, in AI infrastructure in the United States.”
He added that Stargate will be developed very fast and create more than 100,000 American jobs “almost immediately.”
Initially, $100 billion will be invested by the three founding companies and MGX, an Abu Dhabi company that specializes in AI investment. SoftBank said that its portion of the capital will come from the company itself.
Open AI will manage the venture operationally.
“This is not just for business. This will help people's lives. This will help solve many, many issues, difficult things that otherwise we could not have solved with the power of AI,” said Son. “This is the beginning of our golden age.”
SoftBank rose more than 10% in trading Wednesday after the announcement.
Trump said he will support the project by issuing emergency declarations that will help the new company in getting up and running. Ellison said that 10 data centers for the project are already under construction in Texas.
SoftBank has been enthusiastic about the use and development of AI in recent years.
Last year, the company teamed up with AI search engine startup Perplexity AI to offer customers using SoftBank, Y-mobile and LINEMO a yearlong free trial of a service that uses the language-learning models to answer questions with information pulled from the internet.
In 2023, SoftBank Technology — a subsidiary — established Daily AI, which uses Azure OpenAI to analyze internal documents and improve work efficiency.
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