Trump touts AI venture with OpenAI, Oracle
By: Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
UDA Today
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump announced Tuesday [01/21/2025] a private sector investment of up to $500 billion to build artificial intelligence infrastructure, aiming to outpace rival nations in the business-critical technology.
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Trump said the joint venture, called Stargate, will build data centers and cerate more than 100,000 jobs in the United States. ChatGPT creator OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle, along with other equity backers of Stargate, have committed $100 billion for immediate deployment, with the remaining investment expected over the next four years.
..... CEOs Masayoshi Son of SoftBank and Sam Altman of OpenAI along with Oracle Charmian Larry Ellison joined Trump at the White House for the launch.
..... "Immediately, Stargate will be building the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of advancements in AI," Trump said. "And this will include the construction of colossal data centers."
..... Ellison said the first of the project's data centers is currently under construction in Texas. Twenty will be built, half a million square feet each, he said.
..... The "most charismatic" application of AI, Ellison said, would pertain to electric health records, which would let doctors monitor best practices in far-flung places.
..... It was not immediately clear whether the announcement was an update to a previously reported venture. In March, [2204] tech news website The Information reported OpenAI and Microsoft were working on plans for a $100 billion data center project that would include an artificial intelligence supercomputer also called "Stargate" set to launch in 2028.
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Trump was all in the innovation AI could herald.
..... "AI seems to be very hot. It seems to be the thing that a lot of smart people are looking at very strongly. And our country will be prospering like never before,' Trump said. "It is going to be the golden age of America."
..... AI requires enormous computing power pushing demand for specialized data centers that allow tech companies to link thousands of chips together in clusters.
..... "They have to produce a lot of electricity, and we'll make it possible for them to get that production done very easily at their won plants if they want," Trump said.
..... As U.S. power consumption rises form AI data centers, and the electrification of buildings and transpiration, about half of the country is at increased risk of power supply shortfalls in the next decade, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation said in December. [2024]
..... During the briefing, Trump also floated the idea of his billionaire friend Elon Musk buying the social media app TikTok. On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order halting the enforcement of a ban of the app for 75 days.
..... He then turned to Ellison saying: "I'd like Larry to buy it, too. I have the right to make a deal."