OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle unveil the Stargate venture

At a White House event on 21 January 2025, Sam Altman, Masayoshi Son, and Larry Ellison announced Stargate, a joint venture to invest up to $500 billion in American AI data centers through 2029, $100 billion of it at once. The first site broke ground in Abilene, Texas.

Why it mattered It was the largest publicly announced private commitment to AI infrastructure to that date, and tied the new administration’s industrial policy to one company’s buildout.