WHEN SAM ALTMAN, boss of OpenAI, posted a gnomic tweet this month saying “There is no wall,” his followers on X, a social-media site, had a blast. “Trump will build it,” said one. “No paywall for ChatGPT?” quipped another. It has since morphed from an in-joke among nerds into a serious business matter.

SoftBank, Oracle, MGX form Stargate Project with ChatGPT maker, intend to outspend Microsoft this year Updated OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and investment firm MGX on Tuesday announced plans to spend as much as $500 billion on AI infrastructure in America over the next four years,

Shares of Nvidia, Microsoft, Oracle, and other AI-related companies surged Wednesday after the Trump administration’s announcement of a $500 billion joint venture spurred optimism about a rising tide of AI investments.

The $500 billion Stargate project will be critical to "maintain American leadership in AI," one of the partners said in a statement.

The project, which will be financially led by SoftBank and operationally by OpenAI, will see an immediate investment of $100 billion. Masayoshi Son will be the chairman of the company.

OpenAI's Stargate Project, a $500 billion AI initiative with partners like Nvidia and Oracle, aims to build advanced data centres.

OpenAI, Oracle, Softbank and MGX are investing a record amount in new AI infrastructure even as China's DeepSeek outperforms on cost.

The new agreement “includes changes to the exclusivity on new capacity, moving to a model where Microsoft has a right of first refusal (ROFR),” Microsoft says. “To further support OpenAI, Microsoft has approved OpenAI’s ability to build additional capacity, primarily for research and training of models.”

Trump was joined by Oracle founder Larry Ellison, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, who said the investment would start with $100 billion, plus a goal of $500