US President Donald Trump has announced a $500 billion AI project to make the country a powerhouse in the cutting edge technology and compete with China.
The president has roped in OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle for the joint venture called Stargate.
At a briefing in White House on Tuesday, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son joined Trump for the announcement, along with Sam Altman of OpenAI and Larry Ellison of Oracle.
"What we want to do is we want to keep it in this country," Trump said at the briefing.
"China is a competitor, others are competitors. We want to be in this country, and we're making it available. I'm gonna help a lot through emergency declarations, because we have an emergency, we have to get this stuff built.
"So they have to produce a lot of electricity. And we'll make it possible for them to get this production done easily, at their own plants if they want," he said.
OpenAI in a post on X said the venture will have Softbank as a financial partner with all three firms initial equity funders.
The companies will start the project with an initial funding of $100 billion and pump the rest over the next four years.
Ellison at the briefing said 10 data centers for the project were already under construction in Texas with more planned in the future.
Trump claimed the project would create "over 100,000 American jobs almost immediately."
Altman termed it "the most important project of this era."
"I believe that as this technology progresses, we will see diseases get cured at an unprecedented rate," he said.
Softbank executive Son, who is faced with a flagging bottomline having invested in several loss-making ventures, termed Trump's redux the "golden age."
"Mr President, last month I came to celebrate your winning and promised $100B. And you told me go for $200B. Now I came back with $500B. This is because as you say, this is the beginning of the Golden Age. We wouldn’t have decided this unless you won," he said at the briefing.
Trump earlier rescinded a Joe-Biden-era Executive Order which recommended a rather trepidated AI development, citing its several misuses.
The order, now rescinded, entrusted several US departments, such as Homeland Security and Defense, to come up with rules and regulations with respect to the artificial intelligence.
X owner Elon Musk, a longstanding detractor of OpenAI over its plans to go for-profit, did not seem to put much stock in the project.
"They actually don't have the money," he wrote on X, responding to OpenAI's post.
"SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority," he added.
Image Source: Unsplash
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