Stargate AI Infrastructure Project Begins Construction in Texas

Stargate, the massive artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure project recently unveiled by President Donald Trump, has begun production in Texas -- with data center construction in other states expected to be announced in the coming months.

OpenAI, Softbank, Oracle and other partners' total investment of $500 million in the project will produce a large-scale network of campuses. Each campus will be designed in the roughly 1 gigawatt (GW) or greater range, a measurement of electricity that can power a minimum of 750,000 homes.

During a recent press briefing on The Stargate Project attended by Fox News Digital, OpenAI announced that construction on the first site is underway in Abilene, Texas. Significant progress has been made in identifying additional locations. Stargate is currently weighing 16 additional states as options for future sites.

AI executives have praised Trump's Stargate Project, with OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane stating, "We are really privileged to be with the president, who made clear that Stargate is incredibly important to U.S. nation building." He noted that Donald Trump has been engaged in conversations regarding AI infrastructure since the summer of 2024.

Lehane also described Texas as a state that is "certainly thinking big, acting big and looking to build big." Stargate's short-term rollout will include a 3-phase site selection process that evaluates potential sites based on criteria such as power, size, water, people, and fiber.

OpenAI estimates that each 1 GW supercomputer campus will generate thousands of jobs through direct, indirect and induced effects. Direct effects involve jobs created directly by the campuses, indirect effects relate to how initial industry spending circulates within the local economy, while induced effects are the result of wages earned contributing to consumer spending in the region.

OpenAI emphasizes that ensuring the world's most advanced AI supercomputers remain U.S.-based is crucial for maintaining a competitive advantage over the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The rise of the China-based firm DeepSeek, which has emerged as a potential rival to leading U.S.-based firms, has sparked turmoil in the technology sector. This situation has led to concerns regarding whether U.S. tech companies can maintain their edge in advanced chips and large data centers to train AI models.

Lehane pointed out that developments from DeepSeek underscore the reality of competition between the U.S. and China, declaring, "Whoever ends up prevailing in this competition, it's going to really shape what the world looks like going forward." He addressed the potential impacts on democratic versus authoritarian AI, emphasizing the importance of participation in the economic benefits of this technology.

The company has announced an Infrastructure Blueprint in November and an Economic Blueprint in January as part of their strategy to build key AI ecosystem components.