Trump announces $500B AI infrastructure project

(By Diana Glebova, Steven Nelson, NY Post) WASHINGTON — President Trump unveiled a $500 billion artificial intelligence infrastructure project Tuesday at the White House alongside reps from three tech and investment giants — with those business leaders asserting the initiative could cure cancer.

OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle launched the project, called Stargate, to unleash the new technology with the help of large data centers based in Texas.

“These world-leading technology giants are announcing the formation of Stargate,” Trump said. “So put that name down in your books, because I think you’re going to hear a lot about it in the future — a new American company that will invest $500 billion at least in AI infrastructure in the United States.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Trump “we wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President” and added that the initiative could “create hundreds of thousands of jobs” in America.

“We will see diseases get cured at an unprecedented rate. We will be amazed at how quickly we’re curing this cancer and that one — and heart disease,” added Altman, repeating that AI would “cure the diseases at a rapid, rapid rate.”

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison also expounded on the health benefits of the project.

“Little fragments of those [cancer] tumors float around in your blood. So you can do early cancer detection. If you can do it using AI, you can do early cancer detection with a blood test and using AI to look at the blood test,” Ellison said.

“Once we gene sequence that cancer tumor, you can then vaccinate the person —design a vaccine for every individual person that vaccinates them against that cancer. That mRNA vaccine, you can make that robotically, again using AI, in about 48 hours.”

Ellison said that as part of the new project “10 buildings [are] currently being built, but that will expand to 20.”

Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank of Japan, echoed Trump’s inaugural address remarks from Monday, agreeing that “this is the beginning of the golden age of America.”

“We would not have decided unless you won,” he said. “This will help solving many, many issues — difficult things that otherwise we could not have solved.”

Son added that “artificial super intelligence will come to solve the issues that mankind never, ever have thought that we could solve.”

Trump said the project should create around 100,000 new jobs and will “ensure the future of technology” in the US amid its competition with China.

The pledge will include an investment of $100 billion annually and could rise to $500 billion over the four years of Trump’s presidency, CBS News first reported.

Stargate will initially operate in Texas, but could expand to other locations.

AI was top of mind for Trump in his first two days in office, as he revoked several of former President Joe Biden’s executive orders that aimed to address the risks of the evolving technology.

One order, from 2023, had mandated that AI companies share safety results with the US government if their technology could pose harm to national security, the economy and public health.

The former president had warned that he didn’t want the technology to fall into the “wrong hands” — and that to “realize” the possibilities of AI, the government would have to “govern” it.

The 2024 Republican Party campaign platform had vowed to revoke Biden’s AI orders on free speech grounds.

“We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology,” the platform read. “In its place, Republicans support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.”