Trump announces Stargate, a US$500 billion AI infrastructure plan, and AI has established itself as the main theme of the market this year

Author: Chloe, PANews

On January 21, Trump invited SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison to the White House on his first full day in office.

At the press conference, Trump announced that SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle would jointly establish a new AI company, Stargate. Trump said, "This is the largest AI infrastructure project in history.

These companies will invest US$100 billion in this artificial intelligence project in the initial stage, with the goal of increasing it to more than US$500 billion, including the construction of data centers and physical campuses. Microsoft and NVIDIA are also expected to participate. Trump said the project is also expected to create 100,000 American jobs.

According to people familiar with the matter, in December 2024, Son visited Trump's private residence in Florida in the southern United States and announced that he would invest US$100 billion in the United States during the four years of the Trump administration. It is reported that most investments will be related to AI, and now it seems that the first phase has begun. Trump even publicly praised Sun Zhengyi as a "great leader and investor" at the time, and then asked him in a joking tone: "Are you willing to invest an additional $200 billion?"

Currently, according to foreign media reports, Stargate’s initial equity backers are SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX. Among them, SoftBank and OpenAI are the main partners. SoftBank assumes financial responsibility, Masayoshi Son will serve as chairman, OpenAI assumes operational responsibility, and Oracle, Microsoft, Arm, and NVIDIA all participate in the cooperation as technology partners.

Trump officially abandons energy policy and focuses on artificial

intelligence infrastructure

In the past few months, CEOs of AI technology giants have continued to warn the government that more data centers, as well as the chips, power and water resources required to run them, will be needed in the next few years to support the company's artificial intelligence development. .

Shortly after Trump was sworn in, he lifted the artificial intelligence guardrails imposed by Biden and signed a series of measures to promote American energy development to meet the surging power demand of data centers. The Biden administration has tried to address the potential risks of AI in the past two years, but new President Trump’s new actions, such as revoking Biden’s AI executive order and supporting AI infrastructure, are completely contrary to the trend and send a message that is Direction: Will vigorously develop infrastructure.

"I think this will be the most important project of this era," Sam Altman said at a press conference on January 21. "We can't get this done without President Trump." Trump responded that he would use emergency declarations and executive actions to help build projects, including making energy more accessible. At the press conference, Trump and senior leaders emphasized the potential applications of artificial intelligence in health and other fields, which will drive overall economic growth in the United States in the future.

Sam Altman has previously revealed that OpenAI continues to increase computing requirements to train more complex AI models and provide services. In addition to continuing to expand their use of Microsoft Azure, cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Oracle are also competing to expand data centers to increase computing capabilities.

However, the cost of data centers should not be underestimated. According to McKinsey's forecast, in the next five years, if the data center electromechanical system behind the development of AI is to be constructed, the capital expenditure on procurement and installation alone may exceed US$250 billion.

So where will the funds for Stargate's infrastructure come from? If Trump wants to rely on government funds, Congress will have to approve hundreds of billions of budget expenditures. But this also conflicts with Trump's stance of advocating cutting government spending?

OpenAI’s valuation is not enough, will SoftBank provide the funding?

Since no news has been officially announced, it is unclear how much money SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle will inject into the US$500 billion AI infrastructure project, which has raised questions about the source of funds. If OpenAI is currently valued at more than 150 billion Look, it’s obviously not possible to support Trump’s plan on such a large scale.

However, it can be inferred from the preliminary press conference that OpenAI will guide operations, Oracle, as one of the largest data center operators in the United States, will provide technical resources, and SoftBank has the strong financial strength needed to develop AI infrastructure.

Interestingly, OpenAI has already received investment from SoftBank Group in 2024. So far, OpenAI is using partner Microsoft Azure services in AI development, but the market believes that the computing power provided by Microsoft cannot keep up with OpenAI's needs. If OpenAI will extend its reach to SoftBank and Oracle in terms of AI development infrastructure, Joining forces is a big plus for OpenAI.

And Sam Altman said in an interview with Fox News last month that he believed Trump was "good" at attracting AI infrastructure investment to the United States and said he "looks forward to working with his administration in this regard." "Infrastructure in the United States is very important, and AI is a little different than other types of software because it requires a lot of infrastructure, electricity, computer chips, data centers.

He also estimated that there are currently US$175 billion in global funds waiting to be invested in AI projects. "If the United States cannot attract these funds, they will flow to projects supported by other countries, weakening the United States' global influence."

Market funds have gradually returned to AI projects

After the Stargate news was released, Oracle's stock price rose by about 7%, Nvidia's stock price rose by 2.3%, Arm's stock price rose by 4.1%, etc. "This is a significant opportunity for Oracle, which could become a critical infrastructure provider for this massive investment," Wall Street analysts said.

According to data from SoSoValue today (22nd), the AI ​​Agents sector benefited from Stargate, with an increase of 10.47% within 24 hours. PIPPIN, ARC, and AI16Z increased by 104.82%, 44.63%, and 30.17% respectively. In addition, VIRTUAL increased by 11.95%.

Previous data from Dune Analytics pointed out that Virtual Protocol’s daily transaction volume has been declining since its peak on January 2, and overall revenue in January fell by 99%. An important factor behind this is the rise of TRUMP and MELANIA. Especially in the past week, the Meme sector has become the overall focus of the market, which has depleted liquidity in other areas, including the artificial intelligence agent market, resulting in the market value of AI tokens on January 20. It fell by 10%. Now that Meme is gradually cooling down and coupled with the expansion of Stargate, market funds have gradually returned to AI projects.