The Stargate Project is currently eyeing as many as three sites for AI data centers and Softbank executives said due diligence is currently underway on multiple proposals.
Speaking on Softbank Group Corp.'s fourth quarter earnings call, a trio of CFOs talked investments in Project Stargate and a portfolio that includes OpenAI, Ampere and Arm.
Project Stargate launched in January with plans to allocate $100 billion to build an AI data center in Texas. Investors included SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX. Technology partners included Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle and OpenAI.
- OpenAI's Stargate Project diversifies its cloud infrastructure
- Softbank buys Ampere for $6.5 billion, says complements Arm, AI infrastructure push
- AI infrastructure becomes one big leveraged bet
Yoshimitsu Goto, Board Director and CFO, said Stargate is an effort in collaboration with chipmakers, energy power producers and power generators. When the first Stargate site launches, that capacity will go to OpenAI. Goto added:
"In the Stargate's program here, right now, there are more than hundreds proposals are being made, and we are having a due diligence for those sites.
But still, not being able to announce first yet. I believe that one will be coming out from state of Texas. Maybe first, second and third will be coming from the state of Texas, but there are several going on parallelly so that we are not yet sure. I cannot really be specific which one will be the first, but I believe we are very close there."
Goto on the earnings call fielded numerous questions about the investment in OpenAI as well as Stargate. Goto said there are plenty of banks willing to finance data centers and tariffs haven't been an issue--largely because Softbank is thinking long-term and tariff volatility and policy changes occur almost daily.
On tariffs and Stargate, Goto said:
"Stargate was announced in January. The tariff discussion had not been started back then. So compared to that time, things are changing every day. At this moment, I don't want to be too specific. We try to explore the best decision, best option at the time. But I don't think the tariff itself is going to stop the project's progress. We would like to wait and see a little bit. But more than that, project itself is something that we would like to make sure to launch, and that negotiation is very important for us."
In many ways, Softbank argued that the acquisition of Ampere, Graphcore and ownership of Arm is all a play to be able to power compute for massive data centers in Stargate. Those three companies in the Softbank family are capable of developing chips for large data centers and there are partners already under contract for other capabilities.
Bottom line: Stargate is playing a big role in Softbank's AI long game. Time will tell how it works out.
