January 22, 2025
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Here’s What’s Inside ‘Stargate,’ Trump’s $500 Billion Plan to Boost US AI
Tech giants are backing a major effort announced by President Trump called Project Stargate to add data centers across the US.
An electrical substation near the LC1 CloudHQ data center in Ashburn, Virginia, USA, Wednesday, March 27, 2024.
Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images
KLIMAWIRE | President Donald Trump announced an initiative on Tuesday for several tech giants to invest at least $500 billion in artificial intelligence and data centers at US locations over four years, a move that could shake up the electricity mix and heat up the tech race with China.
Stargate Project is a new company with SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX as main investors. Microsoft and Nvidia are collaborating on the project and construction on one site has begun at a site in Texas, according to an Open AI press release. The company is expected to spend $100 billion “immediately” on Stargate.
At the White House, Trump said he would support Stargate development “a lot” through emergency declarations.
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“We have to build these things… They have to produce a lot of electricity, and we’re going to allow them to do that production very easily,” Trump said.
“What we want to do is keep (AI infrastructure) in this country. China is a competitor,” added Trump, who appeared at the White House alongside Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle CTO Larry Ellison.
The announcement deepens the influence of big tech companies on the administration, which is partnered with Tesla CEO Elon Musk and has the support of several other industry leaders. AI is a significant driver of Trump’s energy policy, as real estate developer Hussain Sajwani announced at a press conference before he took office. $20 billion invested to build data centers in eight states. He and his cabinet have pushed for increased drilling and energy production to meet rising AI demand.
The growth of AI-driven data centers is expected to be a major determinant of the composition of the electricity grid and its emissions over the next two decades. A December report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory concluded that electricity demand from data centers it could be tripled by the year 2028. Many state officials — including the Virginia data center — don’t know how the grid will accommodate all the new power.
The QTS data center complex is under development in Fayetteville, Georgia, USA on Thursday, October 17, 2024.
Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In calling for an energy emergency on Monday, Trump cited “inadequate and intermittent energy supplies” and an unreliable grid, which he said would worsen unless action is taken to power the “next generation of technology.”
During his confirmation hearing this month, Trump’s pick to lead the Interior Department, Doug Burgum, made a similar argument, saying that “clean coal” could help meet the demand for AI from inadequate electricity supplies.
“Especially with this AI battle, people don’t understand what’s coming,” Burgum said before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
It was not immediately clear which energy sources Stargate might tap for its data centers or whether the total funding amount includes previous funding for data centers announced by the companies. Stargate officials said they were currently evaluating potential sites across the country.
Ellison said the Stargate data centers already under construction in Abilene, Texas, currently involve 10 buildings that will expand to 20. Each building is half a million square feet, he said.
Mandy DeRoche, Earthjustice’s deputy managing attorney, urged tech leaders in a statement to turn to low-carbon energy to support AI.
“The projected massive increase in electricity demand from data centers has already raised electricity rates in many parts of the country for homes and small businesses and threatens to increase pollution,” DeRoche said.
Tech giants like Microsoft have announced multi-billion dollar plans to build data centers across the country. In some cases, agreements have been made to power the facilities nuclear and low carbon energy.
On Monday, Trump rescinded then-President Joe Biden’s 2023 executive order on AI that required developers who pose risks to national security, the economy or public health to share the results of security tests with the federal government. That command also had directed the DOE and other agencies to develop guidelines for “safe” AI development.
Demand for electricity from data centers was also a major topic of discussion between Biden and Trump officials, according to the outgoing DOE. Undersecretary of Energy David Turk.
This story also appears Energywire.
Reprinted E&E News Courtesy of POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environmental professionals.
