Maybe I have different priors than the author but I never saw the $500b Stargate as anything "real" in the first place. It seemed pretty obvious this was a way to give an authoritarian president with a love for big numbers and a vindictive streak a win while OpenAI was taking away attention from him.
Same as Foxconn's LCD factory.
I don't like it, I don't respect the companies that do it, but I also understand it.
ashvardanian · 6h ago
$500B is a huge headline number—even by the standards of the world’s largest lossy compression competition. But I don’t think anyone remotely familiar with the space ever expected the number to be accurate, or even cared that much about the total budget. It’s mainly a signal of political will, I assume. Mega-projects always take longer than expected and come with unpredictable costs. That said, OpenAI still has an edge over the competition, and I doubt there are many team better at raising capital than theirs.
Havoc · 4h ago
Maybe Altman wasn’t crazy enough for SB
sharadov · 6h ago
This is becoming standard operating procedure for this administration - talk big investments with companies, trade and tariff deals with Japan,EU. All this is talk, aimed at pleasing the MAGA crowd.
And they have learned that all that Trump loves are deals. As long as they talk big, he laps it up and so does his base.
paulryanrogers · 5h ago
Trump is becoming much like his father when the latter developed dementia: going through the motions of fake work to please himself alone. Meanwhile others run the actual organization.
gsibble · 6h ago
This is a wild story. It's all just marketing sleight of hand. Kind of pathetic.
bgwalter · 8h ago
Naturally they back off. Trump and OpenAI wanted the "$500 billion" headline and they got that. What is happening afterwards does not matter.
gsibble · 6h ago
I think Altman and Softbank wanted it more.
bgwalter · 6h ago
The Stargate Project was announced in the White House in the early period where Trump promoted multiple deals like the Saudi $1 trillion investment in the US.
Having Softbank announce this in the White House is absolutely one of the headline successes that Trump thrives on.
Same as Foxconn's LCD factory.
I don't like it, I don't respect the companies that do it, but I also understand it.
And they have learned that all that Trump loves are deals. As long as they talk big, he laps it up and so does his base.
Having Softbank announce this in the White House is absolutely one of the headline successes that Trump thrives on.