ABILENE, Texas, July 26 — The Stargate project, a $500 billion joint venture announced on January 21, 2025, is funded equally over four years by SoftBank Group, OpenAI, Oracle, and Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds. The earliest AI campus is expected to go live in summer 2026 in Abilene, with the first data center breaking ground in February 2025. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son serves as chairman, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as vice chairman.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison oversees data center construction. Nvidia is the exclusive GPU supplier for the initial 100,000-chip deployment, with SK Hynix as the sole HBM4 memory provider.
Nvidia confirmed that the SK Hynix deal was structured as a ‘take-or-pay’ contract to guarantee memory supply for the next five years. The project aims to build 10 gigawatt-scale AI campuses nationwide, creating over 100,000 jobs. The primary goal is to train and deploy AI models that rival GPT-6 and Google Gemini 3, requiring exascale computing clusters.
Abilene and Beyond
The first site—Abilene, Texas—broke ground in February 2025. The data center is expected to become operational by mid-2026, bringing thousands of construction and permanent jobs. Beyond Abilene, the consortium plans to replicate the gigawatt-scale campuses across the U.S., though the source material does not name additional locations.
The 100,000-job target spans the entire national roll-out. The project’s sheer scale—half a trillion dollars, 10 campuses each drawing a gigawatt of power—will require coordination with grid operators, local utilities, and likely state governments.
The take-or-pay memory contract with SK Hynix underscores how tightly the venture has locked down its supply chain to avoid delays.
What It Means for AI
The stated technical ambition—training models to rival GPT-6 and Google Gemini 3—positions Stargate as a direct competitor in the frontier-model race. Exascale computing clusters are the necessary hardware to train and run those models, and the initial 100,000 Nvidia chips mark the first tranche. The joint-venture structure spreads risk: SoftBank puts up half the equity; OpenAI brings the model expertise; Oracle runs the infrastructure; sovereign funds provide the rest.
Look ahead to the next milestones: operational status for the Abilene campus by mid-2026, the second wave of campus announcements, and the first model trained on Stargate hardware—potentially challenging the current-generation AI leaders. The five-year memory contract with SK Hynix expires in 2030, a timeline that aligns with the full four-year funding horizon ending in late 2028.
Sources
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