US President Donald Trump has announced a private sector investment of up to $500bn to fund for AI infrastructure.
Trump said that ChatGPT's creator OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle are planning a joint venture called Stargate, which he said will build data centres and create more than 100,000 jobs in the US.
These companies, along with other equity backers of Stargate, have committed $100bn for immediate deployment, with the remaining investment expected to occur over the next four years.
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison joined Trump at the White House for the launch, pictured above.
The first of the project's data centres are already under construction in Texas, Ellison said at the press conference.
Overall, 20 will be built, half a million square feet each, he said.
The project could power AI that analyses electronic health records and helps doctors care for their patients, Ellison said.
The executives gave Trump credit for the news. "We wouldn't have decided to do this," Son told Trump, "unless you won."
"For AGI to get built here," said Altman, referring to more powerful technology called artificial general intelligence, "we wouldn't be able to do this without you, Mr President."
AI requires enormous computing power, pushing demand for specialised data centres that enable tech companies to link thousands of chips together 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 said.
As US power consumption rises from AI data centres and the electrification of buildings and transportation, about half of the country is at increased risk of power supply shortfalls in the next decade, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation said in December.
Investment in AI has surged since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, as companies across sectors have sought to integrate artificial intelligence into their products and services.
