US President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a major investment to build infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI) led by Japan’s Softbank Group Corp, cloud giant Oracle Corp and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.
The Stargate AI joint venture “will invest US$500 billion, at least, in AI infrastructure in the United States,” Trump said in remarks at the White House.
“This monumental undertaking is a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential,” he said, a day after his swearing-in for a second term.
Photo: AFP
OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman, Softbank chief executive officer Masayoshi Son and Oracle founder Larry Ellison attended the announcement.
The companies are committed to investing an initial US$100 billion and up to US$500 billion over the next four years in the project, Son said.
The venture comes as big technology players are scrambling to meet AI’s voracious computing needs, as well as find the electricity necessary to expand the new technology.
Trump said Stargate would be building the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of advancements in AI, including the construction of “colossal data centers.”
OpenAI later said on social media that the project “will not only support the reindustrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.”
Softbank and OpenAI are the lead partners for Stargate, with Softbank having financial responsibility and OpenAI having operational responsibility, the post said.
MGX, a technology fund from the United Arab Emirates, is a fourth investor, while Arm Holdings PLC, Microsoft Corp, Nvidia Corp, Oracle and OpenAI are the key initial technology partners, it added.
“Build-out is currently underway, starting in Texas, and we are evaluating potential sites across the country for more campuses as we finalize definitive agreements,” OpenAI said.
Softbank shares soared more than 10 percent — leading Tokyo-listed chipmakers higher — after the announcement.
News of the project comes a day after Trump’s inauguration ceremony was attended by prominent technology chiefs, including Apple Inc chief executive officer Tim Cook, Google chief executive officer Sundar Pichai, Meta Platforms Inc chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos.
Trump later on Monday rescinded an executive order from former US president Joe Biden that established oversight measures for companies developing powerful AI models.
Its repeal leaves the US, home to most of the world’s most impactful AI technology, without nationwide AI development guidelines, even if individual states are pursuing their own measures.
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
RSS