Author: Chloe, PANews
On January 21, Trump invited SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison to the White House on his first full day in office.
At the press conference, Trump announced that SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle will jointly establish a new AI company, Stargate. Trump said, "This is the largest AI infrastructure project in history.
The companies will initially invest $100 billion in the AI project, with the goal of increasing it to more than $500 billion, including building data centers and physical campuses. Microsoft and NVIDIA are also expected to participate. Trump said the project is also expected to create 100,000 American jobs.
According to people familiar with the matter, in December 2024, Masayoshi Son visited Trump's private residence in Florida, southern United States, and announced that he would invest $100 billion in the United States during the four years of the Trump administration. It is reported that most of the investment will be related to AI, and now it seems that the first phase has begun. Trump even publicly praised Masayoshi Son as a "great leader and investor" at the time, and then asked him in a joking tone: "Are you willing to invest an additional $200 billion?"
According to foreign media reports, Stargate's initial equity sponsors are SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX. Among them, SoftBank and OpenAI are the main partners, SoftBank assumes financial responsibility, Masayoshi Son will serve as chairman, OpenAI assumes operational responsibility, and Oracle, Microsoft, Arm, and NVIDIA all participate in the cooperation as technical partners.
Trump officially abandons energy policy and focuses on artificial intelligence infrastructure
Over the past few months, CEOs of AI technology giants have continued to warn governments that more data centers and the chips, electricity and water resources needed to run them will be needed in the coming years to support their companies' artificial intelligence development.
Shortly after Trump was sworn in, he removed the AI guardrails imposed by Biden and signed a series of measures to promote U.S. energy development to meet the surging power demand of data centers. The Biden administration has tried to address the potential risks of AI over the past two years, but the new actions of the new President Trump, such as revoking Biden's AI executive order and supporting AI infrastructure, are completely the opposite of what they should be, and the message they convey is that they will vigorously develop infrastructure.
"I think this will be the most important project of our time," Sam Altman said at a press conference on January 21. "We can't do this without President Trump." Trump responded that he would use emergency declarations and executive actions to help build projects, including easier access to energy. At the press conference, Trump and senior officials emphasized the potential applications of artificial intelligence in health and other fields, which will drive overall economic growth in the United States in the future.
Sam Altman previously revealed that OpenAI is constantly increasing its computing needs to train more complex AI models and provide services. In addition to continuing to expand its use of Microsoft Azure, cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Oracle are also competing to expand data centers to increase computing power.
However, the cost of data centers cannot be underestimated. According to McKinsey's forecast, if the electromechanical systems behind the data center behind AI are to be built and developed in the next five years, the capital expenditure for procurement and installation alone may exceed US$250 billion.
So where will the funds for Stargate's infrastructure construction come from? If Trump wants to rely on government funds, Congress will have to approve hundreds of billions of dollars in budget expenditures, but this also conflicts with Trump's position of advocating cuts in government spending?
OpenAI's valuation is not enough, will SoftBank be responsible for the funding?
Since no official announcement has been made, it is unclear how much money SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle will each inject into the $500 billion AI infrastructure project, which has led to market doubts about the source of funds. If OpenAI is currently valued at $150 billion, it is obviously unable to support such a large-scale plan by Trump.
However, from the initial news at the press conference, it can be inferred that OpenAI will guide the operations, Oracle, as one of the largest data center operators in the United States, will provide technical resources, and SoftBank has the strong financial strength needed to develop AI infrastructure.
Interestingly, OpenAI has already received investment from SoftBank Group in 2024. So far, OpenAI is using its partner Microsoft Azure services for AI development, but the market believes that the computing power provided by Microsoft cannot keep up with OpenAI's needs. If OpenAI extends its tentacles to join forces with SoftBank and Oracle in the infrastructure of AI development, it will be a big benefit to OpenAI.
In an interview with Fox News last month, Sam Altman said he believed Trump was "good" at attracting AI infrastructure investment to the United States, and said he "looks forward to working with his administration on this." "Infrastructure in the United States is very important, and AI is a little different from other types of software because it requires a lot of infrastructure, electricity, computer chips, and data centers.
He also estimated that there is currently $175 billion in global funds waiting to be invested in AI projects. "If the United States cannot attract these funds, they will flow to projects supported by other countries, weakening the United States' global influence."
Market funds have gradually flowed back to AI projects
After the Stargate news was released, Oracle's stock price rose by about 7%, Nvidia rose by 2.3%, and Arm's stock price rose by 4.1%. Wall Street analysts said: "This is an important opportunity for Oracle, and it may become a key infrastructure provider for this large-scale investment."
According to SoSoValue data today (22nd), the AI Agents sector benefited from Stargate, with a 24-hour increase of 10.47%. PIPPIN, ARC, and AI16Z increased by 104.82%, 44.63%, and 30.17% respectively. In addition, VIRTUAL increased by 11.95%.
Previous data from Dune Analytics indicated that Virtual Protocol's daily trading volume has been declining since its peak on January 2, and overall revenue in January fell by 99%. An important factor behind this is the rise of TRUMP and MELANIA. In particular, in the past week, the Meme sector has become the overall focus of the market, which has exhausted liquidity in other areas, including the artificial intelligence proxy market, causing the AI token market value to fall by 10% on January 20. Now that Meme is gradually cooling down and Stargate is launching, market funds have gradually flowed back to AI projects.
