The Stargate Project: A $500 Billion Leap Toward AI Supremacy

In the heart of West Texas, a colossal undertaking is reshaping the landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. The Stargate Project, a joint venture spearheaded by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank, represents an audacious $500 billion investment to construct a network of cutting-edge AI data centers across the United States. Launched with much fanfare in January 2025 at a White House press conference, the project aims to cement American leadership in AI innovation, create jobs, and fuel the next generation of technological advancements. At its core, Stargate is not just a data center project—it’s a bold vision to redefine how AI infrastructure is built and powered, with its flagship campus already under construction in Abilene, Texas.

A Monumental Vision Takes Shape in Abilene

The Stargate Project’s first data center campus, located on an 875-acre site in Abilene, Texas—larger than New York City’s Central Park—is a marvel of scale and ambition. Led by Denver-based infrastructure startup Crusoe Energy, the campus is designed to house up to 400,000 Nvidia GB200 (Blackwell) GPUs across eight massive buildings, totaling approximately 4 million square feet. Each building, at half a million square feet, is a self-contained “AI factory,” engineered to handle the immense computational demands of training and running advanced AI models. The campus is expected to draw 1.2 gigawatts of power, enough to support over 750,000 homes, making it one of the largest data center projects in the world.

Construction began in June 2024, with the first two buildings slated for completion in mid-2025, and the second phase of six additional buildings expected to be operational by mid-2026. Oracle has already begun delivering Nvidia GB200 racks to the site, and parts of the facility are reportedly running early training and inference workloads. The project, codenamed “Project Ludicrous” in its early stages, is backed by a $15 billion investment, including $11.6 billion in debt and equity secured by Crusoe and partners Blue Owl Capital and Primary Digital Infrastructure, alongside a $7.1 billion construction loan arranged by Newmark and led by JPMorgan.

A Collaborative Powerhouse

The Stargate Project is a collaboration of tech titans and innovative startups, each bringing unique expertise to the table. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, serves as the operational lead and primary customer, leveraging the infrastructure to train its next-generation AI models. Oracle provides server infrastructure and leases the site, while SoftBank, under the leadership of CEO Masayoshi Son, handles the bulk of the financial investment. Additional equity partners include MGX, an Abu Dhabi-based AI investment firm, while technology partners such as Nvidia, Microsoft, and Arm contribute critical hardware and expertise.

The project’s announcement, attended by President Donald Trump, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, and SoftBank’s Son, underscored its strategic importance. Trump pledged to support Stargate through executive orders and emergency declarations to secure power and expedite permitting, framing the initiative as a matter of national security and economic re-industrialization. Altman has described Stargate as potentially “the most important project of this era,” with potential applications ranging from curing diseases like cancer to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI).