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Trump’s $500 Billion Stargate AI Project Is Doomed To Fail.
Or is it?
Unless you live under a rock, you have likely heard of Project Stargate. Project Stargate is a $500 billion AI infrastructure joint venture that was announced by Donald Trump, despite the venture being in the works long before he took office. Indeed, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has publicly stated that the project wouldn’t be possible without Trump, which is odd, to say the least, considering it looks like he has nothing to do with the project. But here’s the thing: if you have been paying attention to the actual progress of AI, this huge push makes absolutely zero sense!
Let’s start with what Stargate actually is. At least for now, Trump’s administration isn’t putting a penny into the project. Instead, it is a joint venture between OpenAI, US cloud computing specialist Oracle, investment group SoftBank, and the tech investment arm of the UAE government, MGX. Essentially, over the next four years, SoftBank and MGX will supply $500 billion into this joint venture, and Oracle and OpenAI will use the money to build US-based AI infrastructure, like data centres. Initially, it seemed these data centres would serve a multitude of US-based AI companies, until it was recently announced that they would only serve OpenAI. I wonder why.
