Stargate is a staggering power grab.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has spent the past year seeking an absurd amount of computing power to train the company’s AI models — one report says Japanese officials literally laughed at the amount of electricity he demanded. The stakes were clear: without massive computing resources, OpenAI risked losing ground to tech giants like Google and Meta, who’ve spent years building their AI infrastructure.

But last week, this impossible dream became a press release. Altman secured a mind-boggling $500 billion commitment to build OpenAI’s data center empire, called Stargate, thanks to backing from SoftBank, Oracle, and the Abu Dhabi fund MGX. The White House added its stamp of approval in a press conference, with President Donald Trump flanked by Altman, Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. (The name references a 1994 sci-fi movie, where the stargate is an ancient transportation portal controlled by an all-powerful ruler.)

If it materializes, Stargate could effectively be the largest private computing infrastructure project in history. It would mean a network of massive computing complexes — each spanning hundreds of ac …

Read the full story at The Verge.