Stargate Project

A new, large-scale AI joint venture is forming, backed by President Trump. But a certain tech celebrity was not invited.

This is not the Stargate project you’re looking for. It would be cool, for sure. But it would imply a very different type of stargate. Instead, the Stargate Project in real life will be boring rooms of computer server racks and other boring rooms of computer engineers and scientists hacking away at keyboards and other input devices. However, the results might be pretty awesome, maybe. (Graphic: ENY Media)

Not to be confused with the Stargate Project from 1977, which was a secret U.S. Army unit at Fort Meade, Maryland, established by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and SRI International (a California contractor) to investigate the potential for “psychic phenomena in military and domestic intelligence applications”. Nor is the Stargate Project an attempt to instantaneously teleport to other parts of the universe so we can, for example, “Make The Andromeda Galaxy Great Again”.

Instead, the 2025 Stargate Project is a multi-billion dollar effort to supercharge US artificial intelligence (AI) research and development. The purpose is to “connect with firms across the built data center infrastructure landscape, from power and land to construction to equipment, and everything in between”, according to OpenAI’s official announcement.

“The initial equity funders in Stargate are SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX. SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners for Stargate, with SoftBank having financial responsibility and OpenAI having operational responsibility. [SoftBank CEO] Masayoshi Son will be the chairman… Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, and OpenAI are the key initial technology partners. The buildout is currently underway, starting in Texas,” the statement continues.

By now, everyone and their grandmother is pushing AI development as crucial for driving innovation, enhancing efficiency, and solving complex problems across industries. It will be the cornerstone of future economic growth and societal advancement in the world, according to most developers and technology companies. If that sounds like the Internet hype of the late 1990s, you’re not alone. Except, the implications to our daily lives of AI may be even bigger, if that can be imagined.

However, the rapid expansion of AI also introduces significant security risks, such as data breaches, adversarial attacks, and ethical concerns, necessitating stringent safeguards (like the ones President Trump scrapped recently), transparent governance (versus IP protection concerns), and proactive risk management (sometimes known as, ‘move fast and break things’) to ensure trust, safety, and equitable benefits, all in a time when ‘equitable’ is more frowned upon, discouraged, and has less support than any other time in recent history. The road ahead promises to be bumpy, and things could go sideways quickly.

Was the repurposing of the name of the historical CIA program to conduct psychic espionage done on purpose as a big joke? Not so sure.

The Stargate drop might not be as big of a thing, some may say. Isn’t the US already the tip of the spear in AI development? Yes, but China, the UK, India, and others are close behind, according to a Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI study. Being the tip of the spear requires periodic sharpening.

Go, Singapore, Go! Global AI Leaders map by Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. Once again, the tiny nation of Singapore is acting like it has Texas-sized genitalia while being 10x smaller than Puerto Rico in land area. You can fit the country in your pocket but it has a nominal GDP between Norway and Ireland. But Norway and Ireland didn’t make Stanford’s top ten Global AI Leaders list. Singapore did.

After a record-breaking deluge of day-one executive orders that, expectedly, divided opinion, even among his own Republican Party, Trump announced some unquestionably sound, and bi-partisan initiatives. Stargate, perhaps, was one of them. 

All The President’s AI Men. President Trump spoke in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, as Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, Oracle chief technology officer Larry Ellison, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stood by. (AP Photo/Julia Denmaree Nikhinson)

Many see AI as the next nuclear arms race. “Like nukes, the argument goes, AI is a cutting-edge technology that emerged with unnerving rapidity and comes with serious and difficult to predict risks that society is ill-equipped to handle,” wrote Dylan Matthews in Vox way back in June, 2023, which is like 10 years ago in AI years. Much of his reasoning still sticks.

Another person who’s written and spoken about the magnitude of AI is Elon Musk. He became the President’s tech and efficiency guru, and was a major supporter in his 2nd election win. However, Musk is not an initial component of the Stargate venture. Jamie Wilde at Sherwood wrote the following:

“Elon Musk said yesterday that Stargate — a joint venture that plans to pour $500B into the US’s AI infrastructure — doesn’t have the $$ to do it. His comments failed to put a damper on AI-linked stocks, which kept rallying after Trump gassed up Stargate’s plan to build infrastructure for OpenAI… Musk said on X: ‘They don’t actually have the money’ and ‘SoftBank has well under $10B secured‘… OpenAI CEO Sam Altman replied that Musk was wrong, adding, ‘I realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies’… Separately, Microsoft boss Satya Nadella said, ‘I’m good for my $80B.’”

Musk and his AI efforts getting no love from the deal, considering the apparent BFF vibes with the President, has drawn a bit of speculation. But let’s not worry too much for the richest man on Earth.

His SpaceX company has received nearly $19.8 billion in federal contracts since 2008, and his Starlink satellite company has secured a large portion of its government business through the U.S. Space Force. Additionally, Musk’s vast portfolio of AI-related work, from xAI to Tesla, ensures his participation in the global AI race will not go unnoticed. He’ll scrape by.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Elon Musk became a major, and very public, campaigning force for President Trump’s second presidential run, which made it a little more than conspicuous that xAI was not part of the Stargate Project. But was there ever an agreement that Musk would be involved in everything related to AI? Likely not. Also, AI is a pretty big sandbox. (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

But the global AI race is bigger than Trump, Musk, and Stargate, and no one is guaranteeing rainbows and sunshine for everyone. How this is going to benefit people, and at which tiers of the tax bracket and subscription levels, is still very much in the clouds.

“Trump on Monday scrapped a Biden-signed order to create AI safeguards meant to reduce the tech’s risks to Americans. But the vast resources now being invested in AI imply vast returns, and some believe the technology may end up being less useful (and possibly more harmful) to humanity than tech companies say,” added Wilde.

The dark clouds in our transition to advanced AI-based networks and computer systems are being forecasted. In a trickle-down economy, this means those in the highest monthly subscription tiers will have the most benefits from AI, and protections from the potential storms it might bring. Those less fortunate might enter into a new digital conscription and/or indentured servitude contract in order to benefit from the marvels of AI, or to pay their rent and electricity. However, that AI could have a negative impact on our way of life at all, including on our most basic needs, is cause for concern.

There are many concepts to understand and be mindful of regarding AI. These three right now encompass many of the specific concerns worth their respective deep dives: 1) “the cloud”, 2) “scrapping safeguards”, and 3) the “vast returns” expected from the insanely huge investments being made in the US and around the world.

The cloud is a network of remote computer servers hosted on the Internet that provide on-demand computing resources, such as storage, processing power, and software, to users wherever they have a wired, cellular, Wi-Fi, or satellite connection to a network or the Internet. The more you rely on the cloud, the more forever-growing subscription revenue the server and hosting companies see. That’s fine, but your data is residing under someone else’s roof, rules, affiliations and interests, and will likely be used for training AIs. If you miss payments or have no access to the Internet, you and your data will be separated. If the data center those servers reside in are hacked, there goes your data to who-knows-where.

Scrapping safeguards to AI development is alarming because companies will look to use AI to streamline the cloud, and everything on the planet that requires electricity, and that we depend on, to make it more efficient, cheaper to operate, and more competitive. Safeguards tend to get in the way of that type of progress at times, according to some developers. But if folks are comparing AI to the nuclear arms race, then the idea of scrapping safeguards does not help with confidence.

At the end of the day, “this is not personal, just business.” Securing against foreign AI threats should always be a priority, as with other forms of threats against our way of life. But whether it’s security or business, it is important we stay in front of this technology, not behind it.

Today, the business model in AI is similar to streaming services, and most other things online: securing maximum subscription revenue and lifestyle information from remote users around the world. Whatever it takes to keep our lead is fine — so long as it doesn’t involve squeezing the privacy and life out of a shrinking population that is slowly being replaced in the workforce by new models of automation. The stiffer competition from around the world is understandable, even healthy, and we must fight on, not just with gradual iterations of steady profit margins, but with untethered and fully supported innovation as well.

And what about the homeless, the poor, and the working class? As the frenzied tech giants try to force-feed perpetual subscriptions, apps, and features to the world, not everyone will be able to hop on board. Putting our trust and basic securities in the hands of trillion-dollar, “too big to fail”, corporations is becoming more challenging each day.

Artificial intelligence operates in a much faster space than other other industries before it. Also, this is global from the early stage. There is a fear that beyond losing money, some companies may become irrelevant, and extinct. These things are really possible.

Like in war and politics, business is about winning, and survival, and not everyone will be able to do both. But part of the trouble with AI business is that, it is a business. And that is also why AI — and every other great society-altering technology — has flourished the way it has, because of business dynamics, and government support. That is the most successful model there is: supporting great business, and the government protecting the people’s most basic needs. That is how we made it from the steam engine to artificial intelligence and humanoid robots. Clearly, it is a model that needs to be protected, so we can continue to survive, and win.

Let’s hope the Stargate Project and other efforts will address some of these concerns, and that AI proves to be the next ‘Industrial Revolution’ and ‘Renaissance’ it promises to be — but leaving out the “Dark Ages”.

Pa’lante.

Read OpenAI’s official Stargate Project announcement here.

Artwork from OpenAI’s Stargate Project announcement page.

Also check out AI Revolution’s video on Stargate Project: