Report Claims Trump’s $500 Billion AI Project ‘Stargate’ Is Designed to Beneficiate One Company: OpenAI. Project Stargate was announced by the White House this week as a monumental AI “infrastructure” project that will transform America’s technological capability. Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank CEOs traveled to Washington D.C. to announce the $500 billion effort, and to meet with Trump. Stargate’s supporters claim that it will “reindustrialize” America and create a “strategic ability to protect the national safety of America and its Allies.” According to a According to a recent report in the Financial Times, Stargate represents little more than an OpenAI development deal. Sources claim that it will “exclusively serve” the interests of ChatGPT’s creator. The sources also claim that the project does not yet have enough money to make its promises come true.
Stargate, a technically new company, was formed partly through funding from OpenAI. SoftBank, Oracle Microsoft, NVIDIA and Arm were also involved. The company’s goal is to build data centres and other “AI Infrastructure” throughout the U.S., and, therefore, build “infrastructure that will secure American leadership in AI and create hundreds of thousands American jobs and generate massive economic benefits for the entire globe,” according to a press release posted on OpenAI’s site. While the circulating rhetoric claims that Stargate “benefits the whole world,” anonymous source with knowledge of the Stargate deal reportedly told FT Stargate will primarily benefit OpenAI’s businesses.
One of the anonymous sources told FT that while the project’s supporters made a big deal at the White House this week, they have not worked out all the details. According to sources interviewed by FT, the project “hasn’t yet secured the funding required, will not receive government financing, and will only serve OpenAI when completed.” Another person said that there was a real intention to do this but the details had not been fleshed-out. “People want big things to happen in the first week that Trump is in office.”
It’s unclear who the sources are that spoke with FT, but it’s noteworthy that Elon Musk — a new White House worker and a high profile foe of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — has been saying the exact same thing. Musk said in a tweet that Stargate does not “actually have money” and has ridiculed the project repeatedly.
According to other reporting this week, Stargate has only committed to hiring 57 people, despite claims by the White House that the project would “create hundreds and thousands of American jobs” and generate massive economic benefits for the world. It’s not the best look for a project that’s ultimate goal is to create technologies which can automate labor and eliminate American workers. Gizmodo contacted OpenAI to get a comment, but had not heard back at the time of publication.
The project’s significant ties with an autocratic Middle East regime have also raised eyebrows. One of the largest revenue sources is expected to come from the United Arab Emirates. The Abu Dhabi AI fund, MGXis a founding member of Stargate. It plans to contribute $7 billion to Trump’s initiative. SoftBank and OpenAI, on the other hand, plan to contribute each over $15 billion. MGX is a part of a sovereign fund that is overseen by Sheikh Tahnoun Bin Zayed al Nahyan. He is the intelligence chief for the UAE. Nahyan has spent recent months meeting with top American tech executives–including Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Ruth Porat, the president of Google parent company Alphabet–to discuss AI development, Bloomberg reports. Altman’s shocking dismissal from OpenAI in 2023 was attributed to his trips to the Middle East, where he raised billions of dollars for a chip company focused on AI. Altman’s conversations with the autocratic regime in the Middle East were controversial at the time and remain so today. The reason for Altman’s ouster has never been made public.
