The new sites are scheduled for Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; Milam County, Texas; Lordstown, Ohio; and a yet-to-be disclosed location in the US Midwest. These will augment the existing Stargate facility in Abilene, Texas, as well as ongoing deployments under the core partnership with CoreWeave. Stargate’s backers say this acceleration puts the consortium on track to deliver its full commitment of 10 gigawatts by end-2025.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman framed the expansion as essential: “AI can only fulfill its promise if we build the compute to power it.” Oracle’s side will leverage its cloud infrastructure to support OpenAI’s workloads, while SoftBank contributes its expertise in data centre design and energy systems. Nvidia, a key hardware supplier, has committed up to US$100 billion in chip supply in support of the buildout.
The new facilities are expected to generate 25,000 onsite jobs, with additional indirect employment across supply chains and regional economies. The sites were selected from a field of more than 300 proposals across over 30 states, according to communications from the consortium.
The infrastructure push is tightly interwoven with a growing slate of commercial contracts. CoreWeave has just expanded its deal with OpenAI by up to US$6.5 billion, bringing total value of their collaboration this year to US$22.4 billion. Meanwhile, OpenAI and Oracle have signed a US$30 billion agreement to lease 4.5 gigawatts of computing power, bolstering Oracle’s positioning as a major cloud-AI provider. Nvidia’s financial backing and supply commitments reinforce the hardware ecosystem needed to satisfy surging demand for AI compute.
Yet challenges persist. SoftBank’s CFO has publicly acknowledged delays in synchronising partnership decisions and finalising site agreements, attributing slippage to alignment across key collaborators. In another earlier move, SoftBank acquired a former Foxconn electric vehicle plant in Ohio to support the Stargate expansion in the region. The Ohio site acquisition could help streamline land, power and infrastructure logistics for the Lordstown facility.
Analysts note that the scale and capital intensity of Stargate invite risks of financing strain, energy supply constraints, and regulatory scrutiny over cross-company dependencies. The interlocking investments—Oracle investing in GPU supply, Nvidia acquiring minority stakes in partners, and circular leasing arrangements—could provoke antitrust attention. Still, in announcing the new sites, the consortium emphasised that the expansion puts them “ahead of schedule” to fulfil the full 10-gigawatt, US$500 billion pledge.
In parallel with the U. S. expansion, Stargate is exploring international deployment, notably in the UAE, where a Gulf-based version is under discussion with multiple stakeholders including Oracle, Nvidia and regional AI firms. That potential global footprint underscores the ambition: to position Stargate—not merely as an American AI infrastructure project—but as a foundational global compute network.
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