Dive Brief:

• A joint venture among OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle plans to invest $100 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure, with the potential to scale up to $500 billion by the end of President Donald Trump’s second term in office, according to a White House press conference.
• Stargate, the newly announced initiative, includes 10 data centers, including one already under construction in Abilene, Texas, said Larry Ellison Oracle chairman and chief technology officer, during the Tuesday event at the White House. Each facility will span about 500,000 square feet.
• Plans call for the initiative to double to 20 buildings, with additional locations beyond Abilene, he added. Details about the location or timing of the other data centers were not announced.

Dive Insight:

The news arrives as the construction industry works on an already full pipeline of data center projects.

Hyperscalers and tech companies are racing to expand their data center capacity to meet growing demand. Big tech companies were on pace to pour more than $180 billion into data center expansions and related infrastructure costs last year, according to Dell’Oro Group.

That’s good news for contractors in the data center space. Trump expects the privately funded initiative to drive significant investments into the U.S. data center market and secure the United States’ leadership in AI innovation and infrastructure. 

“Beginning immediately, Stargate will be building the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of advancements in AI,” said Trump during the press conference. “This will include the construction of colossal data centers — very, very massive structures.”

In addition, Trump pledged to streamline permitting and accelerate project timelines to ensure the initiative’s success. He said energy projects will play a key role to support this AI infrastructure buildout.

“I’m going to help a lot through emergency declarations, because we have an emergency, we have to get this stuff built,” said Trump. “So, they have to produce a lot of electricity, and we’ll make it possible for them to get that production done very easily, at their own plants if they want. They’ll build energy generation.”