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Project Stargate Isn’t What You Think It Is.
It is insidiously dangerous.
The $500 billion Project Stargate is an utterly unprecedented investment in the tech industry. But, to anyone keeping an eye on the reality of the AI industry, it makes zero sense. I have already covered the scaling issues, data issues, and OpenAI’s profit issue with Project Stargate in a previous article. But something didn’t sit right with me. If Project Stargate can’t further the AI industry or even help OpenAI make a profit, why are private investment firms pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into it? When you go digging, Project Stargate looks less like a tech investment and more like an insidious plot to manipulate the market. Let me explain.
Project Stargate is a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, investment group SoftBank, and the tech investment arm of the Abu Dhabi oil company ADNOC, MGX. The project is intended to build AI infrastructure, like data centres, in the US on a scale never seen before, with OpenAI being the exclusive customer. The investment comes mainly from SoftBank and MGX, with an initial investment of $100 billion and $400 billion extra promised over the next four years. OpenAI and Oracle will design and build the infrastructure, most likely using OpenAI’s in-house designed chips.