Among the concerns raised about the Stargate project, which involves partnerships with OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank, were scarce details about infrastructure support. Little by little, the companies disclosed their intentions and, on Tuesday, OpenAI and Oracle announced plans to build an additional 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of Stargate data center infrastructure in the U.S., pushing OpenAI’s total planned capacity beyond 5 GW. Interestingly, SoftBank is not involved in financing this buildout, despite being part of the Stargate project.
Under the terms of the plan announced in January, OpenAI, Oracle, and Softbank plan to build 20 data centers each measuring 500,000 square feet (46,450 square meters). However, it was unclear how they intended to power the data centers, as it does not look like the U.S. infrastructure has enough spare capacity to power the additional AI servers, cooling systems, and networking equipment used in AI data centers unless some sort of additional infrastructure is built.
