The new sites—combined with the flagship campus in Abilene, Texas, and other projects with CoreWeave—bring Stargate to nearly 7 gigawatts of planned capacity and over $400 billion in investment over the next three years. This moves the initiative toward its $500 billion, 10-gigawatt commitment announced in January, ahead of the original 2025 schedule.

Three of the new data center sites are located in Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; and an upcoming site in the Midwest. An additional 600-megawatt expansion is under evaluation near the existing Abilene site. Together, these sites will contribute over 5.5 gigawatts of capacity.

$500 Billion Stargate Initiative Gains Momentum

In July, OpenAI and Oracle agreed to develop up to 4.5 gigawatts of additional Stargate capacity. This represents a $300 billion partnership over the next five years. The expansion is expected to create over 25,000 onsite jobs, with tens of thousands more across the U.S.

The other two sites announced are part of a partnership between SoftBank and OpenAI. These sites can scale to 1.5 gigawatts within the next 18 months. One site is in Lordstown, Ohio, where construction has started. The second is in Milam County, Texas, being developed in partnership with SB Energy, a SoftBank Group company.

Nationwide Site Selection Process Yields First Five Locations

The five sites were selected through a nationwide process launched in January. More than 300 proposals were reviewed from over 30 states. This announcement marks the first set of selections, with more to follow as the companies continue toward their initial $500 billion commitment.

The Abilene flagship campus, running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), is already operational. Oracle began delivering the first NVIDIA GB200 racks in June. Early training and inference workloads have already started at this site.

Leaders Highlight Infrastructure’s Role in AI Progress

“AI can only fulfill its promise if we build the compute to power it. That compute is the key to ensuring everyone can benefit from AI and to unlocking future breakthroughs. We’re already making historic progress toward that goal through Stargate,” said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

“Oracle’s reliable, scalable, and secure AI infrastructure is helping OpenAI rapidly scale its business. To meet this enormous demand, we continue to expand OCI’s footprint at an unrivaled pace to deliver the most performant and cost-effective AI training and inferencing,” said Clay Magouyrk, CEO of Oracle.

“Stargate is harnessing SoftBank’s innovative data center design and energy expertise to deliver the scalable compute that powers AI’s future. Together with OpenAI, Arm, and our Stargate partners, we are paving the way for a new era where AI advances humanity,” said Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp.

OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank originally announced the $500 billion Stargate commitment in January at the White House alongside President Trump. The companies cited the Administration’s policies as contributing to faster progress and increased momentum.

PHOTO: OPENAI

This article was created with AI assistance.