On 21 January 2025 OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle presented Stargate at the White House, a plan to invest up to $500 billion in artificial intelligence data centres in the United States.
A day after his inauguration, on 21 January 2025, President Donald Trump presented the Stargate project at the White House alongside Sam Altman (OpenAI), Masayoshi Son (SoftBank) and Larry Ellison (Oracle): a new company that would invest up to $500 billion over the following four years in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States, starting with $100 billion immediately.
What we know
SoftBank took financial responsibility and OpenAI operational responsibility; Son would chair the company. Its technology partners included Oracle, Nvidia, Microsoft and Arm. The first campus, with several data centres, was already under construction in Abilene, Texas, and the plan envisaged other sites around the country.
The announcement came with doubts about financing: Elon Musk himself publicly questioned whether the partners had the money committed. During 2025 OpenAI went on to sign capacity agreements with Oracle, Nvidia, AMD and other suppliers that far exceeded that figure.
Why it matters
Stargate became the symbol of an unprecedented investment race in data centres, chips and electricity for artificial intelligence. In 2025 the big US technology companies devoted hundreds of billions of dollars to that infrastructure, lifting chipmakers, utilities and network suppliers on the stock market.
A few days later, the Chinese company DeepSeek unveiled an artificial intelligence model it said had been trained for far less money, and Nvidia’s shares fell almost 17% in a single day. The contrast summed up the big question of the year: how much real return all that investment will deliver.
What to bear in mind
For investors, artificial intelligence already weighs heavily in the main stock indices through a handful of companies, so a portfolio tracking the US market is highly exposed to that investment cycle. It is worth knowing how much exposure you have, directly or through funds. Ask your adviser how this applies to you.
Great technology waves are built with concrete, chips and electricity before they are built with algorithms.
This article is general information. It is not legal, tax or investment advice, and it does not take anyone’s particular circumstances into account.
