OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank to Build Five New AI Data Centers for $500 Billion Stargate Project

OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank announced plans to construct five new artificial intelligence data centers in the United States as part of their massive Stargate project, an initiative expected to reshape AI infrastructure.

President Donald Trump hosted leading tech CEOs in January to launch Stargate, a private-sector effort aiming to spend up to $500 billion on the compute power needed to support the next generation of AI.

OpenAI and Oracle will build three new facilities in Shackelford County, Texas, Doña Ana County, New Mexico, and an undisclosed Midwestern site. Together with SoftBank and its affiliate, OpenAI will also develop two additional centers in Lordstown, Ohio, and Milam County, Texas.

These new facilities, combined with Oracle-OpenAI’s Abilene, Texas expansion and ongoing projects with CoreWeave, will boost Stargate’s total data center capacity to nearly 7 gigawatts. According to OpenAI, this represents over $400 billion in investments over the next three years. The ultimate goal remains 10 gigawatts of total capacity.

“AI can only fulfill its promise if we build the compute to power it,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement.

The new projects are expected to create 25,000 on-site jobs. The announcement follows Nvidia’s pledge on Monday to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI and supply data center chips.

To finance Stargate, OpenAI and its partners plan to use debt financing and lease chips, according to sources familiar with the matter.

With backing from Microsoft, OpenAI joins other tech giants pouring billions into AI infrastructure to support services such as ChatGPT and Copilot.

Given AI’s growing importance in sensitive fields like defense—and with China racing to catch up—both the private sector and the Trump administration have made AI infrastructure a strategic priority.