OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank have unveiled five new large-scale artificial intelligence data center sites across the United States under Stargate, OpenAI’s flagship infrastructure program.
The announcement, which cements the consortium’s role at the heart of America’s AI race, pushes the initiative to nearly 7 gigawatts of planned capacity and more than $400 billion in secured investments over the next three years.
With this milestone, Stargate is now on course to meet—and possibly surpass—its $500 billion, 10-gigawatt target by the end of 2025, ahead of the original schedule announced in January.
Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 19 (Feb 9 – May 2, 2026): big discounts for early bird.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and co-invest in great global startups.
Register for Tekedia AI Lab: From Technical Design to Deployment (next edition begins Jan 24 2026).
Expansion Across Texas, New Mexico, the Midwest, and Ohio
In July, OpenAI and Oracle deepened their partnership with a deal to deliver up to 4.5 gigawatts of new capacity. That agreement, valued at over $300 billion across five years, marked one of the largest corporate partnerships in AI infrastructure to date.
As part of this phase, three sites have now been selected: Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; and a soon-to-be-announced Midwest location. Alongside a potential 600-megawatt expansion at the flagship Abilene, Texas, Stargate campus, these facilities are projected to add more than 5.5 gigawatts of compute power. Collectively, they are expected to generate over 25,000 direct onsite jobs and tens of thousands of additional roles in supporting industries nationwide.
Meanwhile, SoftBank will spearhead two additional projects. In Lordstown, Ohio, the Japanese conglomerate has already broken ground on what it calls an advanced data center design, expected to go live in 2026. Another site in Milam County, Texas, will be delivered in partnership with SB Energy, SoftBank’s renewable energy subsidiary, which is building the powered infrastructure to support rapid deployment. Combined, the SoftBank sites will add up to 1.5 gigawatts within 18 months, with room for multi-gigawatt scaling.
The five sites were chosen from more than 300 proposals submitted by over 30 U.S. states following a nationwide competition launched in January. The rigorous selection process prioritized scale, energy infrastructure, and speed to deployment. Officials say further U.S. sites will be announced in the coming months as the partnership accelerates beyond its $500 billion goal.
Oracle, which is delivering cloud infrastructure for Stargate, confirmed that its Abilene campus—already operational on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)—is seeing rapid progress. The company began delivering NVIDIA’s GB200 racks in June, marking a major leap in AI computing.
OpenAI has since started running early training and inference workloads on the system, signaling that the infrastructure is already feeding into next-generation model development.
Leaders Emphasize Scale, Speed, and Access
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described compute infrastructure as the “key” to ensuring AI delivers benefits at scale.
“AI can only fulfill its promise if we build the compute to power it. That compute is the key to ensuring everyone can benefit from AI and to unlocking future breakthroughs. We’re already making historic progress toward that goal through Stargate,” Altman said.
Oracle’s Clay Magouyrk highlighted the speed of deployment, saying: “Oracle’s reliable, scalable, and secure AI infrastructure is helping OpenAI rapidly scale its business. To meet this enormous demand, we continue to expand OCI’s footprint at an unrivaled pace to deliver the most performant and cost-effective AI training and inferencing.”
Backdrop of U.S. AI Industrial Strategy
The Stargate initiative was first unveiled in January at the White House alongside President Donald Trump, framed as a cornerstone of the Administration’s drive to expand U.S. AI infrastructure and compete globally. Administration officials have credited Trump’s industrial policy framework for accelerating both domestic investment and foreign partnerships in the sector.
With Oracle, SoftBank, and other partners, OpenAI is translating its $500 billion promise into large-scale physical infrastructure that brings jobs, regional development, and computing capacity critical to powering the next wave of AI breakthroughs.
Executives say Stargate is not just about meeting current AI demand but building the foundation for a trillion-dollar future where compute availability advances artificial intelligence to advance humanity.
“Stargate is harnessing SoftBank’s innovative data center design and energy expertise to deliver the scalable compute that powers AI’s future. Together with OpenAI, Arm, and our Stargate partners, we are paving the way for a new era where AI advances humanity,” SoftBank Chairman, Masayoshi Son, said.