On January 21st, 2025, President Trump stood in the White House with the CEOs of OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle and announced the largest private investment in American history: $500 billion to build the data centers that run AI. They called it Stargate.
One day later, Elon Musk called it a bluff — "They don't actually have the money." And he had a point: the $500B was a four-year target; the partners had put up only ~$45B. Yet in Abilene, Texas, the first site was real and running by September. Then it got stranger: OpenAI's total compute commitments passed $1 TRILLION — on ~$13B of revenue — with money moving in a circle (Nvidia invests in OpenAI, OpenAI buys Nvidia chips). Even the people building it admit it: "someone is going to lose a phenomenal amount of money," Altman said — and yet AI may be the most important thing in a long time. Both can be true.
Foundation of a new age, or the most expensive bubble in history? The buildings are real. Whether the demand ever justifies the price — and who pays if it doesn't — no one has answered.
The Frontier Wars, Part 6. Follow for the series.