Trump Trumpets Half-Trillion Investment in AI to ‘Keep America First’
Freshly installed at the Oval Office on 20 January 2025, President Trump did not lose time and made a big bang announcement in his trademark style right on his first day at the office on 21 January 2025. Indeed, President Trump convened a press conference at the White House, in the presence of Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son (aka Masa), Oracle CTO Larry Ellison and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, to officially announce the #Stargate project, with a codename seemingly straight from a sci-fi movie.
During the electoral campaign, President Trump actually pledged to invest USD 100 billion into Artificial Intelligence (#AI) to keep America first in technological innovation. The money would come from SoftBank and Trump urged Masa to do more and try to come up with USD 200 billion.
In the end, Masa of Softbank did more than expected and is now pondering a total of USD 500 billion over the 4-year presidential term of Trump. One hundred billion will be made available immediately, with the remaining 400 billion being disbursed over the four-year mandate. Echoing Trump during his inaugural address, Masa even jokingly went on to refer to the launch of Project #Stargate as the start of the ‘New Golden Age for America.’
President Trump also highlighted that the Stargate project will generate over 100,000 jobs in America. Already, AI data centers are under construction in Texas, with more on the drawing board.
Larry Ellison reported that Oracle is working on improving healthcare using AI. In the foreseeable future, doctors will be able to improve diagnostics and personalize treatments with the assistance of AI models built from medical #BigData.
Surprisingly, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, criticized the announcement by putting in doubt the availability of such a huge sum. Quizzed by reporters on Stargate, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella smartly skipped the controversy by simply reiterating his company’s commitment to invest USD 80 billion in AI. It is to be recalled that Microsoft has invested in and holds a 49% in OpenAI.
Generally, several stocks of related #hitech companies closed with a gain on the day of the announcement. For instance, Oracle’s stock price experienced a notable surge of 6.8% following the announcement. Nvidia, which makes AI chips, saw its share price rise by 4% which boosted its market capitalization to USD 3.58 trillion, thus surpassing Apple to become the most valuable tech company.