Various sources:

OpenAI and various news outlets announced the Stargate Project earlier today. The Stargate Project is a collaboration between tech companies and the Trump Administration to help build AGI, citing national security and industrialization as key motivators on the government side. The main corporations involved are SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX. SoftBank (a Japanese investment company) is head of the financials, while OpenAI (the AI company behind ChatGPT) is leading the operational side. The chairman of the project is Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank.

The overall budget for the project is 500 billion dollars, with 100 billion dollars set to be deployed immediately. A lot of the money appears to be going to building data centers in Texas (where Oracle is currently headquartered). It’s also announced that the Microsoft and OpenAI partnership has been refortified, with re-upped agreements that OpenAI must purchase from Azure.

It’s not entirely clear what the government’s precise involvement in the project is. The funding seems to be coming entirely from private sources. It could be that in order for foreign investors to feel secure investing, they needed the government’s blessing that the project was OK to move forward?

Apparently, this had been rumored since last March. Which, now that you mention it, the name “Stargate” did sound vaguely familiar (in the context of OpenAI; I know that Stargate is a sci-fi reference). What I think happened is that I briefly saw the rumor back in March and dismissed it as outlandish. A lot of things about the political landscape and tech landscape have changed since then. Trump also revealed that he would be repealing Biden’s 2023 executive order on AI risk. I doubt the repeal of the executive order is legally all that impactful, but the message it sends is quite clear: Trump is firmly on the side of tech corporations.

Maybe I’m overreacting, but I feel like OpenAI’s victory in the race for AGI is all but assured. Even if you think highly of the engineering and management talent at other AI firms, OpenAI is still demonstrably competent. And if their financial situation is that much better than competitors, then it’s not hard to see them attracting more talent in the long run, even if initially people are reluctant due to ideological differences.