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President Trump announced a multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence infrastructure deal Tuesday with private tech companies, predicting the planned data centers will create more than 100,000 jobs in the U.S.
OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle are teaming up for a joint venture called Stargate. Mr. Trump was joined at the White House by SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Oracle’s Larry Ellison.
“As you know there is great competition for AI and other things and they’re coming in at the highest level,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump said the joint venture will invest up to $500 billion over the next four years. A sum of $100 billion will be invested immediately.
“We want it to be in this country and we’re making it available,” he said, adding that he’ll speed up the project through emergency declarations.Â
The first project will be a data center in Texas, but moves will be made in other states as well.
“This will help people’s lives, this will help solving many, many issues, difficult things that otherwise we could not have solved, with the power of AI,” Mr. Son said.
Mr. Ellison previewed one of the uses of the data centers — keeping track of electronic health records and helping doctors better understand them, along with better diagnosing diseases and helping find cures.
He detailed the possibilities of early cancer detection and the use of AI to read blood tests and come up with a specially designed vaccine to fight specific cancers.
“This is the promise of AI and the promise of the future,” he said.
Mr. Trump signed an executive order Monday that repealed a 2023 executive order from former President Joseph R. Biden that had required AI companies to share the results of safety tests with the U.S. government before releasing them to the public, in hopes that it would protect national security. The repeal was praised by those in the industry.
Earlier in January, Mr. Trump announced that Damac Properties, a United Arab Emirates real estate firm, was investing $20 billion to build new data centers in the U.S. He said it will “keep America on the cutting edge of technology and artificial intelligence.”
In December, Mr. Trump announced a $100 billion investment by SoftBank over the next four years, which they said will create 100,000 jobs focused on artificial intelligence and infrastructure.
AI policy experts are already praising the announcement. Co-founder and President of Americans for Responsible Innovation Brad Carson said this deal is Mr. Trump “signaling he wants to clear the way for the U.S. to lead on AI innovation.”
“The president has given tech innovators and investors a seat at the table, and he’s going to bulldoze any roadblocks in their way,” he said in a statement. “This is the first step he’s taking to tackle growing infrastructure and energy needs that are [a] bottleneck [to] innovation, but it’s certainly not the last.”