Unlock Editor’s Digest Lock for Free
FT editor Roula Khalaf will select your favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Oracle will spend around $400 billion on Nvidia’s high-performance computer chips and power Openai’s new, huge US data center. Technology groups compete to build the vast infrastructure needed to support artificial intelligence models.
The Abilene, Texas site is billed as the first US Stargate project, a $500 million data center scheme led by Openai and SoftBank, and will deliver 1.2 gigawatts of electricity when completed next year, making it one of the world’s largest.
Oracle has purchased around 400,000 NVIDIA’s GB200 chips, the latest “super chip” for training and running AI systems, and according to several people familiar with the issue, it will leased computing power to OpenaI.
Site owners Crusoe and US investment company Blue Owl Capital raised $15 billion in debt and capital in June last year to fund the first broken Abilene project, which encompasses eight buildings.
The data center is expected to be fully operational by mid-2026. Oracle has agreed to lease the site for 15 years. Founded earlier this year, Stargate has not invested in the site.
JPMorgan has provided the majority of its debt financing across two loans totaling $9.6 billion, according to people close to the issue, including the $7.1 billion loan announced this week. Crusoe and Blue Owl have invested approximately $5 billion in cash separately.
Once completed, its size rivals plans by Elon Musk to expand his “Colossus” data center in Memphis, Tennessee to house one million Nvidia chips. Many of the data centers have been built up to date on Nvidia’s previous H100 and H200 chips, but this is not very powerful. Musk said this week that the next phase of the Colossus will be the “first Gigawatt AI training super cluster.” Amazon is building data centers in northern Virginia, more than 1GW.
Abilene Data Center is a key step in Openai’s move to reduce reliance on Microsoft. Previously, the $300 million startup has exclusively relied on US software giants for computing power, and the majority of Microsoft’s nearly $14 billion investment in Openai comes in the form of cloud computing credits.
Openai and Microsoft agreed to terminate their exclusive agreement earlier this year after the startups got frustrated with how far the supply of the US technology giants. The two groups are negotiating to determine how long Microsoft will retain license rights to Openai’s model.
Stargate will play a key role in providing Openai’s future computing power. The highly-profile venture, billed as a massive infrastructure project to boost the US AI industry, has raised $100 billion to spend on data center projects, rising to up to $500 million over the next four years.
Openai and SoftBank each committed $18 billion to Stargate. This was announced in January by US President Donald Trump. According to those familiar with the issue, Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds Oracle and MGX each committed $7 billion.
Recommended
According to the second person with knowledge of the issue, the four groups will hold the equity stakes for the project, with SoftBank and Openai being the majority owners. Stargate has so far committed no capital to its data center projects.
Openai is also planning to expand its Stargate Project overseas and build a large data center in the UAE, which was announced last week as part of Trump’s Gulf tour. The 10-square-mile UAE-US AI campus in Abu Dhabi is built by Emirati AI company G42 and features 5GW of data center power.
Oracle did not immediately respond to requests for comment. JPMorgan and Openai declined to comment.
