The A.I. Data Center Push That Wasn't
Slate Technology
Slate
4.6 • 636 Ratings
🗓️ 3 August 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
OpenAI’s Sam Altman, flanked by President Trump and Softbank’s Masayoshi Son, announced a hugely ambitious investment in data centers across America to support all the artificial intelligence we’re going to be using. Months in, the project has been scaled back to a single, power-hungry data center in Ohio.
Guest: Berber Jin, reporter covering A.I. for the Wall Street Journal
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Monopoly game at McDonald's is back. |
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| 0:17.0 | May depend on winning moment. |
| 0:18.0 | See victory rules.co.uk.uk.U.K. |
| 0:28.7 | Well, thank you very much, and it's an honor to be here today. |
| 0:33.3 | We have a first full day as president. |
| 0:34.0 | We're back. |
| 0:39.9 | On January 21st, a freshly sworn in, though kind of tired-sounding President Trump, |
| 0:42.5 | had a press conference with some big names in tech. |
| 0:48.5 | Oracles Larry Ellison, SoftBanks, Masayoshi Sun, and Open AIs Sam Altman. |
| 0:57.0 | The idea was to announce a splashy joint project, a $500 billion investment in American artificial intelligence and data centers. It would be called Stargate. Together, these world-leading technology giants |
| 1:03.3 | are announcing the formation of Stargate. So put that name down in your books, because I think |
| 1:10.5 | you're going to hear a lot about it. |
| 1:12.5 | Certainly, everyone in front of the microphones wanted you to hear about their plans and how patriotic |
| 1:18.3 | they sounded. Just listen to Altman. To create hundreds of thousands of jobs, to create a new industry |
| 1:23.9 | centered here. We wouldn't be able to do this without you, Mr. President, and I'm thrilled that we get to. |
| 1:29.0 | In the press conference, Altman pledged that he would begin investing $100 billion immediately |
... |
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