President Donald Trump revealed a new project called Stargate just two days into his presidency. The initiative aims to invest $500 billion over the next four years to enhance the United States’ capabilities in AI development.
Trump expressed the importance of the project and the plan by saying “We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately.”
The Stargate project intends to create a shared structure among government agencies, academics and American careers. The enterprise will focus on streamlining data sharing and gathering AI research.
In addition to research, this project will highlight the development of ordinance and guidelines for ethical AI use. Trump mentioned that addressing ethical considerations is essential to ensuring responsible AI practices. He stated that the initiative is to promote innovation while safeguarding public interests.
Construction of information centers has begun in Texas, with 10 500,000-square-foot data centers planned to be built.
Denise McWilliams, a computer science professor at the University of North Georgia, gave input about Stargate and data centers. “It depends on how they structure their services and they will have to standardize data so they can be more compatible,” she said. “Usually the data is one of the biggest problems in terms of compatibility or standardization.”
“If it meets the hype, it should stir up the market in terms of the various companies and their developers coming out with new products and imitators trying to do what they’ve done. Stores will close and new ones will open just as it always happens with new AI and data.” – Denise McWilliams, UNG Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Information Systems
Trump summarized plans for partnerships with leading tech companies, including NVIDIA, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Google and Tesla. He noted that these collaborations are there to spur on performance improvements benefiting multiple industries like healthcare, transportation and national security.
There are multiple equity funders in this project already, such as SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX. SoftBank has financial responsibility while OpenAI has operational control.
Luke Atwood, a senior at UNG majoring in finance and accounting and CEO of the Investment Club, discussed the effects of such projects on the market.
“When you look at the market, you see that seven stocks make up roughly 30% of the S&P [The Standard and Poor’s] 500, the index widely considered as the benchmark of the market. These seven stocks are NVIDIA, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Google and Tesla. When the market’s top stocks are all AI driven, any news, good or bad, will heavily shift the market and stock prices.”
