The Emergence of Stargate and the Battle for Dominance in the Global Artificial Intelligence Arms Race
So now we have STARGATE, announced as the US's latest salvo in the global AI arms race. Stargate is a massive AI infrastructure project introduced by President Trump during his inauguration. Valued at US$500 billion, it aims to fund the development of data centres across the US, support AI research, and develop new applications.
The project is ostensibly presented as a job creation initiative, which I find oxymoronic. Stargate, it is claimed, will create 100 000 jobs. In my view, most of these will be infrastructure development roles that will disappear once the data centres are completed.
The paradox of this project is that AI, as an automating technology, inherently reduces human input in work processes. I always find it absurd when tech projects are touted as solutions for job creation.
Meanwhile, everyone—including the punk rock band Green Day—has taken a swipe at Elon Musk for his outsized influence on American politics. But in this instance at least, President Trump has excluded Musk from the Stargate project.
Stargate’s key investors and implementers are:
- OpenAI: Led by Sam Altman, the US AI research company that developed ChatGPT.
- Oracle: Founded by Larry Ellison, Oracle is a US IT firm specializing in database software and cloud computing services.
- SoftBank: A Japanese investment firm owned by Masayoshi Son.
- MGX: An AI and tech investment firm from the United Arab Emirates.
Musk, of course, is not one to let things slide quietly. He’s taken to X, questioning the project’s financial viability.
While Musk and Altman trade barbs online about Stargate's prospects, one of the best descriptions of the project I heard this week came from Keith Teare, a tech podcaster and co-host of the ‘That Was the Week’ podcast.
Teare describes Stargate as an “OpenAI manoeuvre to retain its dominance in the AI race. It’s getting government behind a massive data centre rollout that only runs OpenAI’s AI. Nobody else’s…you could think of it as capturing territory. And the fact that Trump got behind it when Musk’s Groq is a direct competitor, and that Musk poured cold water on it, tells you that it's really much more about manoeuvring dominance in the AI wars than anything else.”
While US companies jockey for dominance in the AI race amongst themselves, those of us observing from the outside recognize this as a global competition. From where I sit, it looks like we’re off to the races to determine who will achieve AGI (artificial general intelligence) first. Predictions vary widely, from the next five years to sometime in the 2040s. AGI is undoubtedly the next significant AI innovation on the horizon, and we should all hold onto our seats tightly.