President Trump pledged on Jan. 21 to help facilitate electric power and other assistance to a consortium of artificial intelligence (AI) tech firms who said this week they plan to invest $100 billion in AI infrastructure as part of what they are calling The Stargate Project.
The project – whose founders said their investment total may rise to $500 billion over the next four years – aims to create infrastructure that will “secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world,” according to Stargate’s lead partners SoftBank and OpenAI, who are being joined by Oracle and MGX as initial equity funders.
“This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies,” the companies said.
The project was announced at a press conference at the White House on Tuesday.
President Trump called the Stargate effort the “largest AI infrastructure project by far in history,” and said he would assist the new company in gaining access to the electric power that it will need for its operations.
“What we want to do is we want to keep [AI innovation] in this country” in the face of pressing competition from China, President Trump said.
“I’m going to help a lot through emergency declarations … we’ll make it possible for them to get that production done very easily,” the president said.
Trump added, without providing details, that he would allow Stargate to generate its own electricity to power the project’s operations.
AI operations typically require much more electricity than other data center operations, with a Goldman Sachs’ report published last year estimating that AI data center power demand could climb by up to 160 percent by 2030.
To help meet some of that demand, President Trump issued an executive order and declared a state of national energy emergency after his inauguration on Monday to increase domestic fossil fuel extraction to boost energy in the United States.
Stargate kicked off prior to President Trump taking office, and the venture is starting with 10 data centers which are already under construction in Texas.
On Monday, Trump also rolled back former President Biden’s executive order on AI which established safety guardrails and other requirements for Federal use of AI. One of Trump’s campaign promises was to repeal the order after saying that it stifled AI innovation.
