What's Up with the Stargate Project?
The $500-billion Stargate project announced in January 2025 seems to be facing a crisis of confidence, as ambitions hit up against the hard realities of creating a massive national and global datacenter infrastructure for AI.
At the heart of the situation is OpenAI, which has taken a leadership role in rolling out Stargate and uses the brand name Stargate for all its major datacenter projects. These are facing delays, grassroots opposition, and in the case of a major project in Abu Dhabi, danger from Iranian missiles. Further, it looks like preeminent partner Oracle is struggling to meet its part in supplying OpenAI with promised Stargate infrastructure.
Consider recent news items: Last week, OpenAI, which has a 40% interest in the Stargate project (SoftBank also holds 40%, and Oracle and UAE investment firm MGX each hold 10%), paused a plan for an 8,000-GPU Nscale datacenter in a large industrial park in Northeast England. The AI company said that power costs and regulatory hurdles were the roadblocks.
The original plan, dubbed Stargate UK, was announced in September 2025. It was supposed to grow to include up to 31,000 GPUs and support sovereign AI for the UK. While rather modest compared to some other planned Stargate projects, the UK installation was anticipated to generate significant business for the country.
Changing Plans, Losing Execs
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