SoftBank Group (OTCPK:SFTBY) (OTCPK:SFTBF) said it is taking longer than expected to get the Stargate project off the ground, acknowledging for the first time that the $500B AI collaboration in the U.S. with OpenAI is slowing down, Bloomberg News reported.
SoftBank’s CFO Yoshimitsu Goto said during an earnings briefing that the company is trying to reach a consensus with partners including Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) and Abu Dhabi’s MGX. The Japanese company expects to start “concrete” negotiations for its first Stargate datacenter site soon, according to Goto, the report added.
SoftBank did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Seeking Alpha.
“We need to take our time to prepare a model case for Stargate,” Goto said to the analysts and reporters. “A lot of parties are involved. Time is needed to form a consensus.”
SoftBank’s Founder Masayoshi Son and OpenAI Co-Founder Sam Altman introduced the Stargate project in January along with President Donald Trump, with promises to start deploying $100B “immediately” and raise that to about $500B. However, months later, it’s yet to start raising funds or building data centers.
Some of the discussions behind Stargate have slowed due to market volatility, uncertainty about U.S. trade policy and questions around the financial valuations of AI hardware, Bloomberg News reported in May. Previously, it was also reported that SoftBank had pitched the idea of taking part in a $1T AI manufacturing hub in Arizona to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) and others.
OpenAI is backed by Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT).
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