On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the private sector would contribute up to $500 billion to finance artificial intelligence infrastructure, aiming to surpass other countries in crucial commercial technology.
According to Trump, Oracle, SoftBank, and OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, are preparing a joint venture named Stargate that would construct data centers and generate over 100,000 jobs in the US.
Together with other Stargate equity backers, these businesses have pledged $100 billion for deployment. The remaining funds are anticipated to be invested over the next four years.
Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son joined Trump at the White House for the debut.
Ellison stated during the press conference that the first of the project’s data centers is now being built in Texas.
According to him, twenty half-million-square-foot buildings will be constructed.
Laptops 1000According to Ellison, the research may enable AI physicians in providing patient care.
The CEOs attributed the news to Trump.
Son told Trump, “Unless you won, we wouldn’t have decided to do this.” “We wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President,” Altman added, alluding to the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI), a more potent technology.
Whether the news was an update to a previously announced endeavor was unclear at first.
According to a March 2024 story on the technology news website The Information, an artificial intelligence supercomputer known as “Stargate” is scheduled to launch in 2028 as part of a $100 billion data center project that OpenAI and Microsoft are developing.
DATA CENTERS THAT NEED POWER
Following the revocation of previous President Joe Biden’s executive order on AI, which was meant to lessen the threats that AI poses to workers, consumers, and national security, the announcement was made on Trump’s second day in office.
Due to AI’s high processing demands, there is a growing need for specialized data centers that allow IT companies to connect thousands of processors in clusters.
“They have to produce a lot of electricity, and we’ll make it possible for them to get that production done very easily at their own plants if they want,” Trump stated.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation stated in December that roughly half of the nation is more vulnerable to power supply shortages in the ensuing ten years due to the spike in power usage from AI data centers, building electrification, and transportation.
Trump failed to fulfill his 2016 campaign pledge to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure bill.
During his first term as president, which lasted from 2017 to 2021, he frequently discussed the subject but never made a significant investment, and “Infrastructure Week” became a joke.
