OpenAI will partner with SoftBank to build and open $500 billion of artificial intelligence infrastructure in the US over the next four years. Both companies merged to create a new company called Stargate project build artificial intelligence data centers for the ChatGPT maker, and according to their statement, this will “ensure American leadership in artificial intelligence” and will also “create hundreds of thousands of American jobs.” SoftBank will finance the project, and OpenAI will be in charge of its operations. The chairman of the board of directors will be Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank.
While OpenAI and SoftBank will be the lead partners in the Stargate project, several other companies are involved in the initiative. In addition to OpenAI, its key initial technology partners will be Arm, NVIDIA, Oracle and, of course, Microsoft. The company's official statement says that OpenAI, NVIDIA and Oracle will work together to “build and operate this computing system,” but it doesn't explain what that means.
As for Microsoft, the company published announcement about its participation in the project and said it would continue its “strategic partnership” with OpenAI. Microsoft will still have the right to use the OpenAI IP in its products, and the OpenAI API will continue to run exclusively on Azure. However, it will no longer be OpenAI's exclusive provider of computing power. Whenever OpenAI requires additional power as its needs grow, Microsoft will have the “right of first refusal”, which means the ChatGPT developer must check this first before working with other parties.
Project Stargate will immediately commit $100 billion to build its first data centers, starting with one in Texas. How TechCrunch notes, it was previously reported that OpenAI was in talks with Oracle to lease a data center in Abilene, Texas, that could provide nearly a gigawatt of power by 2026. The company didn't mention any other sites, but said it was “evaluating potential” locations across the country.
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