On Tuesday afternoon, President Donald Trump held a press conference to announce Stargate, a $500 billion artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure project in the United States. He called it the "largest AI infrastructure project, by far, in history."
What you know about the Stargate project
Stargate is a joint venture between top tech companies Oracle, SoftBank Group, and OpenAI. Oracle is best known for its enterprise database software and cloud computing services. SoftBank, based in Japan, is an investment holding company that mainly invest in tech companies. OpenAI is the creator of ChatGPT, the chatbot that caused a sensation when it launched in late 2022. It showcased the amazing capabilities of generative AI, sparking a rush among companies to acquire generative AI capabilities.
Trump was joined at the conference by Larry Ellison, co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle; Masayoshi Son, SoftBank founder and CEO; and OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman.
Stargate will create over 100,000 American jobs, Trump said, emphasizing that the project will be entirely in the United States. He added that he was "going to help a lot through emergency declarations." I think investors can take this to mean that he plans to lessen any regulatory hurdles that could slow the project's progression. He also mentioned that the "colossal" data centers could include on-site electricity generation. AI-enabled data centers are power hungry, so having adequate and dependable power is a major consideration.
Oracle's Ellison outlined the project's scope. Construction has started on 10 data centers being built in Abilene, Texas, which is about 180 miles west-southwest of Dallas. Each building will be a half a million square feet, which is bigger than seven regulation-size NFL football fields. The number of facilities will expand to 20 and there will be locations beyond Abilene, Ellison said. It wasn't clear to me if he meant there will be 20 facilities in Abilene and additional ones in other locations. He might have meant there will be 20 in total -- 10 in Abilene and 10 in other locations. No matter, as the main takeaway remains that this is a massive AI infrastructure project.
SoftBank's Son talked about money and other partners. He said Stargate "will start immediately deploying $100 million" with the goal of bringing the total investment to $500 billion within the next four years, or by the end of Trump's term.
Investment firm MGX is an additional investing partner in Stargate, and Nvidia (NVDA 4.10%) is the joint venture's technology partner, said Son.
Nvidia is poised to get a big boost from the Stargate project
Nvidia is the leader, by far, in providing chips -- its graphics processing units (GPUs) -- and related technology for AI processing in data centers. So, even if SoftBank's Son had not specifically mentioned Nvidia by name, it would be obvious for investors following Nvidia that the Stargate project would almost surely be bullish for the company. This project is going to need a boatload of Nvidia's GPUs and related tech, which is going to add much revenue to the company's coffers.
Son referred to Nvidia as Stargate's "technology partner," but it's not clear if there is a true partnership relationship beyond Nvidia being a key supplier of AI-enabling technology to Stargate. Oftentimes in the tech world, company execs will use the term partners for their top suppliers even if technically they're simply suppliers.
Either way, Nvidia is poised to notably benefit from what Trump called the "largest AI infrastructure project, by far, in history."
