Stargate was built to make OpenAI independent of the companies it competes with. The engineers who built it now work at one of those companies.
The Design
When Donald Trump unveiled the Stargate Project at the White House on January 22, 2025, the number dominated the coverage: $500 billion. SoftBank, Oracle, and OpenAI would build a national network of AI data centers.
The problem it addressed was quieter. OpenAI had grown to a company valued at $157 billion, running on compute it didn't own. Its products ran primarily on Microsoft's infrastructure, under terms negotiated in 2019 and renegotiated as the company scaled. Microsoft was simultaneously building its own AI products using the same technology. The dependency was structural — not hostile, but real. OpenAI needed more infrastructure than any single partner could supply. Stargate was the answer.
The Warning
Two days after the White House announcement, the Financial Times reported that Stargate "lacks a fully developed plan, hasn't yet secured funding, will get no government financing, and will exclusively serve OpenAI once operational." The criticism was specific and immediate: SoftBank had pledged capital it hadn't raised; OpenAI and its partners hadn't aligned on who would build what. That prediction turned out to be the most accurate thing anyone wrote about Stargate for the next fifteen months.
The Phases
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JAN 2025Stargate announced at the White House: $500B, three partners, data centers to be built across the US.
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JUL 2025WSJ: Stargate has "struggled to get off the ground and sharply scaled back its near-term plans" as SoftBank and OpenAI disagree on crucial terms.
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FEB 2026The Information: OpenAI "scrambled for compute as Stargate stalled amid clashes with SoftBank." Building its own data centers is "not its near-term priority."
- Mar 2026 OpenAI appoints new leaders to oversee Stargate, splits its computing effort in three, and formalizes renting from cloud providers.
- Apr 9, 2026 OpenAI pauses Stargate in the UK, citing energy costs and regulatory challenges.
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APR 10, 2026Three senior executives who helped build Stargate leave OpenAI and join Meta.
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APR 29, 2026FT: OpenAI has "in practice, abandoned its Stargate JV" in favor of large bilateral deals.
The Transfer
The bilateral deals that replaced Stargate are agreements with the companies OpenAI competes with. Microsoft reported today that its AI business surpassed $37 billion in annual revenue, up 123% year over year. Google Cloud grew 63% in Q1 — and said its growth was constrained by capacity, not demand. These are the companies that will now be pricing and provisioning OpenAI's compute. The dependency that Stargate was designed to eliminate has become the strategy.
Sam Altman has described OpenAI's guiding principle as "build more compute." The brand survived the collapse of the structure it was built around — Stargate continues as a name on international deals, a new leadership team, a three-track effort without a center.
The three engineers who spent two years designing OpenAI's compute independence are now at Meta, which raised its 2026 infrastructure budget by ten billion dollars on the same day OpenAI confirmed it had given up. The expertise didn't disappear. It changed sides.