OpenAI Scrambles for Compute After Stargate Stalls
OpenAI had to hunt for computing power after the $500 billion Stargate data center project hit major delays.
Remember that splashy $500 billion Stargate AI data center project announced in January 2025? Turns out it hit a wall — and OpenAI had to scramble.
When President Donald Trump unveiled the massive initiative, three companies were tapped to make it happen. But the project stalled, leaving OpenAI in a compute crunch and forced to find alternative sources of processing power.
The company hasn't abandoned its data center ambitions entirely. Sources say OpenAI still plans to build its own facilities — just not anytime soon. That's a significant shift for a company burning through compute at an extraordinary rate.
For now, OpenAI is patching together infrastructure rather than building it from scratch. The gap between the Stargate vision and reality underscores just how hard it is to spin up AI infrastructure at scale, even with a half-trillion-dollar price tag attached.