The Trump administration unveiled this week a plan to develop a $100 billion artificial intelligence datacenter with Softbank, OpenAI and Oracle, with plans to expand to “at least” $500 billion in investment.
Bloomberg reported that sources near the project said it is expected to be powered at least in part by solar and energy storage developed by SB Energy, a subsidiary of Softbank.
The mega-project, called Stargate, outsizes President Biden’s largest-ever climate and energy spending package, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which set aside at least $369 billion to support the energy transition and create well over 100,000 jobs. Trump recently ordered a pause to all IRA disbursements.
Bloomberg said the White House, SB Energy, Softbank and Oracle declined requests for comment. An OpenAI spokesperson told Bloomberg the company is considering various options for how Stargate can help modernize the U.S. energy grid, looking at technology ranging from nuclear power to batteries.
SB Energy has experience in developing solar and storage for datacenters, including a 942 MW power purchase agreement for Google.
The rapid advancement of AI-powered data centers alone is expected to account for 8% of the U.S.’s total energy consumption by 2030, up from 3% in 2022, according to Goldman Sachs.
(Read: “The great grid transition in the age of data centers and EVs”)
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