OpenAI’s $30B Oracle deal fuels Project Stargate AI buildout

OpenAI has been revealed as the customer behind Oracle’s massive $30 billion annual cloud computing contract, with the AI company leasing approximately 4.5 gigawatts of data center power to support its expanding artificial intelligence workloads. The deal represents one of the largest cloud computing contracts to date and directly supports OpenAI’s ambitious “Project Stargate” initiative to scale AI infrastructure across the United States.

What you should know: Oracle will develop multiple data centers across the U.S. as part of this unprecedented cloud computing agreement.

• Sites under consideration include Texas, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wyoming.
• Oracle will also expand a 1.2GW Stargate facility in Abilene, Texas, in collaboration with data center start-up Crusoe.
• The new contract will begin in fiscal year 2028.

The big picture: This massive infrastructure deal is part of OpenAI’s four-year, $500 billion AI infrastructure plan announced in January 2025.

• Project Stargate is backed by founding partners including OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund.
• Key initial technology partners include Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, and OpenAI.
• The initiative aims to “secure American leadership in AI” and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Why this matters: OpenAI positions Project Stargate as critical for both economic and national security interests.

• “This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies,” OpenAI said in its January announcement.
• The scale of the Oracle deal demonstrates the massive infrastructure investments required to support next-generation AI development.

Global expansion: Beyond the U.S., OpenAI is reportedly developing international AI infrastructure partnerships.

• The company is looking to develop a Stargate data center campus in the United Arab Emirates.
• This international expansion involves partnerships with Oracle, NVIDIA, Cisco, SoftBank and regional AI firm G42.