OpenAI and SoftBank Group Corp. are stepping up their artificial intelligence infrastructure ambitions with a joint $1 billion investment in SB Energy, signalling how critical power and data centre capacity have become in the global AI race. Under the arrangement, OpenAI and SoftBank will each invest $500 million to support the expansion of data centre and energy infrastructure for Stargate, OpenAI’s large-scale AI computing initiative. SB Energy will be responsible for building and operating a 1.2 gigawatt data centre campus in Milam County, Texas, one of the largest single-site AI infrastructure projects announced to date.
The investment is part of Stargate, a $500 billion multi-year plan aimed at creating massive AI data centres to support both model training and inference at unprecedented scale. The initiative has attracted backing from major technology players, including Oracle, and has also received public support from US President Donald Trump earlier this year, underscoring its strategic importance to America’s AI ambitions.
Beyond infrastructure development, the partnership deepens the commercial relationship between OpenAI and SB Energy. As part of the deal, SB Energy will become a customer of OpenAI, integrating its APIs and rolling out ChatGPT internally for employee use. SB Energy Co-CEO Rich Hossfeld said the collaboration “accelerates our delivery of advanced AI data center campuses and associated energy infrastructure at the scale required to advance Stargate and secure America’s AI future.” The statement reflects how closely AI compute expansion is now tied to energy availability and grid-scale planning.
The agreement also highlights a broader industry trend, as leading AI companies move upstream into power generation and energy infrastructure to meet soaring electricity demand. Training and running large AI models requires enormous compute resources, driving unprecedented investments in chips, cooling technologies, servers, and power capacity. Companies such as Meta have already announced multi-billion-dollar spending plans to secure the infrastructure needed to support their AI roadmaps.
For OpenAI, the push comes amid intensifying competition and rising costs. Rivals like Google continue to advance models under the Gemini brand, increasing pressure on OpenAI to scale faster and more efficiently. CEO Sam Altman has previously described the company as operating in a “code red” environment, reflecting the urgency around infrastructure, energy security, and speed. As AI development becomes increasingly capital-intensive, partnerships like the one with SoftBank and SB Energy underline how control over power and data centres is emerging as a decisive advantage in the next phase of the AI race.
