Trump announces up to $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure

(Patria) - U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday private sector investments of up to $500 billion to finance artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, reported Reuters.

OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle plan a joint venture based in Texas called Stargate, initially investing $100 billion, and then up to $500 billion for Stargate over the next four years.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI's Sam Altman, and Oracle's Larry Ellison joined Trump at the White House for the presentation.

The announcement on the second day of Trump's term followed the rescission of former President Joe Biden's executive order on AI, which aimed to reduce the risks AI poses to consumers, workers, and national security.

AI requires immense computing power, driving demand for specialized data centers that enable tech companies to link thousands of chips together in clusters.

"They have to produce a lot of electricity, and we're going to make it very easy for them to produce that electricity in their own plants if they want to," Trump said.

As U.S. energy consumption rises with AI data centers and the electrification of buildings and transportation, about half the country is at increased risk of power outages in the next decade, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation said in December.

As a candidate in 2016, Trump promised to push a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill through Congress, but did not. He often spoke about the topic during his first presidential term from 2017 to 2021, but did not achieve a major investment, and "Infrastructure Week" became a punchline.

In March 2024, The Information, a technology news website, reported that OpenAI and Microsoft were working on plans for a $100 billion data center project that would include an AI supercomputer also called "Stargate" and was expected to launch in 2028.

Investments in AI have surged since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, as companies across various sectors seek to integrate artificial intelligence into their products and services.