OpenAI, Oracle, and Stargate Clash Over $500 Billion AI Infrastructure Deal, Project

The stall has turned a high‑profile, Trump‑announced $500 billion AI data‑center venture into a cautionary tale of partnership friction, according to The Information, which cites three insiders familiar with the “shelved idea.” More than a year after the consortium’s public launch, OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank have not hired a single employee for the project nor broken ground on any of the planned facilities. The three firms remain locked in a dispute over who should own the operational hierarchy and how risk should be allocated, disagreements that first surfaced in the summer of 2025 and have since deepened.

OpenAI’s attempt to go it alone on the infrastructure front failed when lenders balked at financing a billion‑dollar data‑center build for a company still posting heavy losses, The Information reports. After that setback, OpenAI returned to its original partners, but the relationship has been reshaped into a bilateral arrangement with Oracle rather than a three‑way consortium. In July, Oracle and OpenAI announced a 4.5‑gigawatt commitment across multiple U.S. sites, splitting economic risk so that any cost overruns are shared while savings benefit both parties. The deal, described by The Information as a “risk‑sharing” model, marks OpenAI’s shift toward cloud partnerships to protect its balance sheet—a strategy reiterated by CFO Sarah Friar at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The fallout has already forced OpenAI to abandon its earlier 10‑gigawatt pact with Nvidia, originally unveiled in September 2025. With the Stargate timeline slipping, OpenAI scrambled for alternative capacity, striking supplemental agreements with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, AMD and Cerebras, The Information notes. Those stop‑gap deals underscore how the consortium’s delays are inflating costs and nudging the company toward rivals that can deliver compute more reliably.

Despite the broader impasse, a single site has finally moved beyond the planning stage. In October, ground was broken on a 1‑gigawatt campus in Milam County, Texas, after OpenAI reached a compromise with SoftBank: OpenAI will sign a long‑term lease and control the facility’s design, while SoftBank Energy will own and develop the project. The Information describes the arrangement as a “lease‑and‑design” compromise that could serve as a template for future phases if the partners can reconcile their governance disputes.

If the three‑way Stargate vision cannot be salvaged, the $500 billion figure may remain more symbolic than substantive. Analysts cited by The Information warn that the inability to lock down the promised 10 GW of capacity by year‑end has already eroded confidence among investors and potential customers. For now, OpenAI’s reliance on external cloud providers and the nascent Texas campus are the only tangible signs that the AI infrastructure ambition is inching forward, while the broader partnership remains mired in unresolved governance and financing battles.