Report: OpenAI’s Stargate has been a chaotic mess
Just over a year ago, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stood alongside President Trump, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son to announce an ambitious $500 billion plan to build massive data centers in the US — Project Stargate.
While today an actual Stargate 1-gigawatt data center is certainly well under construction in Abilene, Texas, it turns out there wasn’t much of a plan in place at the time of the announcement, according to a new report from The Information.
The past year has been full of partner disputes, debt problems, and scuttled plans as the loosely defined project races to build the AI computing infrastructure that OpenAI is craving as competition heats up.
Per the report, OpenAI tried to build its own data centers as the project stalled, but lenders balked at funding the risky project. They eventually settled on the current plan, in which partner Oracle borrows the money and leases capacity back to OpenAI. OpenAI was still able to control the design of the facility.
The slow start for the project resulted in OpenAI missing its own goal of 10 gigawatts of AI computing capacity from Oracle and SoftBank by the end of 2025.
The past year has been full of partner disputes, debt problems, and scuttled plans as the loosely defined project races to build the AI computing infrastructure that OpenAI is craving as competition heats up.
Per the report, OpenAI tried to build its own data centers as the project stalled, but lenders balked at funding the risky project. They eventually settled on the current plan, in which partner Oracle borrows the money and leases capacity back to OpenAI. OpenAI was still able to control the design of the facility.
The slow start for the project resulted in OpenAI missing its own goal of 10 gigawatts of AI computing capacity from Oracle and SoftBank by the end of 2025.
