OpenAI, in partnership with Oracle and SoftBank, has revealed plans to build five major AI data center sites in the United States, pushing forward the $500 billion Stargate project initially launched in January 2025. These massive infrastructure sites will support next-generation generative AI applications and are expected to generate up to 10 gigawatts of computing capacity.
Three of the data centers will be developed jointly by OpenAI and Oracle in Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; and an undisclosed site in the Midwest. Two additional sites—located in Lordstown, Ohio, and Milam County, Texas—will be co-developed by OpenAI and SoftBank, with support from a SoftBank affiliate.
Infrastructure at the Heart of AI’s Future
“AI can only fulfill its promise if we build the compute to power it,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, reinforcing the view that infrastructure is central to generative AI’s future impact. The new data centers, when complete, will add nearly 7 gigawatts of capacity—bringing the total Stargate investment close to its $500 billion target.
The project’s scale reflects the growing race to establish global dominance in AI infrastructure. The compute power envisioned would rival energy needs of over 8 million U.S. households and power advanced workloads such as training large language models (LLMs), running agentic AI systems, and hosting high-volume inference deployments.
Funding and Job Creation
OpenAI noted that most of the investment will be structured via debt financing and chip leasing models, enabling faster rollout while managing capital pressure. The newly announced data centers are expected to generate approximately 25,000 onsite jobs in construction, operations, and engineering.
This expansion closely follows Nvidia’s $100 billion investment pledge in OpenAI, announced just a day earlier. Oracle, SoftBank, Microsoft, and chip design firms like Arm are also involved in the broader Stargate ecosystem.
Geopolitical and Technological Significance
AI has emerged as a critical area of national interest in the U.S., with President Donald Trump calling the Stargate initiative a cornerstone of the country’s AI ambitions. The Stargate network is positioned as a public-private alternative to China’s state-backed AI infrastructure growth.
As global competition intensifies, the strategic convergence of compute power, cloud capacity, and sovereign data centers may determine not just technological leadership—but also the geopolitical balance in the AI era.
