OpenAI has announced 5 new US data centres under its Stargate project. Working with Oracle and SoftBank, the company says the new sites will give it access to almost 7 gigawatts of computing capacity in the next 3 years. The investment is worth over $400 billion and forms part of a larger $500 billion plan announced in January.
So, 3 of the new sites will be in Shackelford County, Texas, Doña Ana County, New Mexico as well as an unnamed location in the Midwest. A possible 600 megawatts of added power at the main Stargate campus in Abilene, Texas, is also on the table. Together, these 4 locations could produce 5.5 gigawatts of capacity. According to OpenAI, the process of picking these sites involved looking at more than 300 proposals across 30 states.
The Shackelford site is expected to link to a 1.4 gigawatt campus that Vantage announced earlier this year. Reports say Oracle may lease that site to run AI servers. In New Mexico, Doña Ana County will host Project Jupiter, a campus announced in July by Stack and BorderPlex Digital Assets. That scheme carries an expected spend of $165 billion. While OpenAI has not confirmed if it is involved in that exact project, industry reports point to the overlap.
What Is SoftBank Building Under Stargate?
SoftBank is leading 2 of the new data centre projects in partnership with OpenAI. The sites can grow to 1.5 gigawatts within 18 months. One site is in Lordstown, Ohio, where work has already started. It is described as using an advanced design and should be ready next year.
The second site is in Milam County, Texas, where SoftBank’s energy arm SB Energy is developing powered infrastructure. This will allow the site to be built quickly and start running high power AI systems. Together, the Ohio and Texas projects highlight SoftBank’s growing role in Stargate’s infrastructure network.
The company said the new sites will create more than 25,000 onsite jobs, alongside tens of thousands in related work across the country. OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank say that this is a massive buildout of both digital and physical infrastructure.
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How Far Along Is The $500 Billion Stargate Project?
Stargate was launched in January as a $500 billion plan backed by OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank and Abu Dhabi’s MGX. The target is 10 gigawatts of capacity across the United States by the end of 2025. This month’s announcements place the project at almost 7 gigawatts of capacity already planned.
In July, OpenAI signed a contract worth $300 billion for cloud services from Oracle over 5 years. Oracle has also started delivering NVIDIA racks to the Abilene site, which is already running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Some early training and inference workloads have started there.
What Have The CEOs Said?
The CEOs of the companies involved have shared their thoughts on the project…
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said: “AI can only fulfill its promise if we build the compute to power it. That compute is the key to ensuring everyone can benefit from AI and to unlocking future breakthroughs. We’re already making historic progress toward that goal through Stargate and moving quickly not just to meet its initial commitment, but to lay the foundation for what comes next.”
Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp, said: “Stargate is harnessing SoftBank’s innovative data centre design and energy expertise to deliver the scalable compute that powers AI’s future. Together with OpenAI, Arm, and our Stargate partners, we are paving the way for a new era where AI advances humanity.”
Clay Magouyrk, CEO of Oracle, said: “Oracle’s reliable, scalable, and secure AI infrastructure is helping OpenAI rapidly scale its business. To meet this enormous demand, we continue to expand OCI’s footprint at an unrivalled pace to deliver the most performant and cost-effective AI training and inferencing.”
