Since President Trump announced the 50 billion dollar StarGate AI data center project in January 2025, progress has not met expectations. The collaboration among the three companies involved in the project — OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank — has hit a deadlock. Within weeks of the project's launch, StarGate failed to form an effective team, causing construction plans to completely stall.

Due to the lack of leadership and coordination mechanisms, OpenAI, which urgently needs computing power, had to seek self-rescue. Initially, OpenAI had planned to take on most of the construction work itself, even considering leasing or owning large data centers to reduce reliance on other cloud service providers. However, financial institutions were concerned about its unverified business model and refused to provide necessary financing support.

After some reflection, OpenAI executives finally realized the importance of collaborating with StarGate. Although the initial cooperation was not smooth, recently OpenAI has gradually reached a series of bilateral agreements with SoftBank and Oracle, slowly resuming progress on the StarGate project. OpenAI's Chief Financial Officer, Sara Fleya, revealed at the World Economic Forum in Davos that OpenAI will rely more on cloud partners to ease financial pressure.

At the same time, OpenAI is also reaching agreements with other cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud to address the urgent need for computing power. The company even considered using chips other than NVIDIA to expand computing capacity. Although the stagnation of the StarGate project has affected OpenAI's financial performance, the company remains determined to move forward toward its future goals.

In this context, OpenAI has begun to collaborate with SoftBank Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank, to develop a data center in Texas. Despite disagreements over control issues, after multiple rounds of negotiations, OpenAI and SoftBank reached a compromise, ensuring that OpenAI retains control in design, thus avoiding full investment. This marks a strategic shift in OpenAI's infrastructure development, gradually moving from a self-built model to a collaborative model.

Looking ahead, OpenAI hopes to achieve more efficient computing power expansion through this collaborative approach, ensuring its leading position in the competitive AI market.

Key Points:

✨ Project Stagnation: The StarGate AI project has stalled due to internal coordination problems, prompting OpenAI to seek self-rescue.

🚀 Shift in Collaboration: OpenAI is working with cloud service partners, reducing reliance on self-built data centers.

💡 New Direction: Through collaboration with SoftBank, OpenAI achieves design control without full investment.