Stargate’s AI Strategy: Safeguarding the Nation or Raising Antitrust Concerns?

AI Competitors Join Forces on Stargate Project Amid Monopoly Fears as Yale Expert Raises Red Flags

A partnership among leading AI companies—including OpenAI,

, , and SoftBank—has unveiled Stargate, a $500 billion collaboration praised by President Donald Trump as the “largest AI infrastructure initiative ever.” Revealed in January 2025, the venture seeks to unite computing resources across seven gigawatts of data centers located in Texas, New Mexico, Michigan, Ohio, and the UAE. Supporters argue it is essential for maintaining U.S. dominance in AI, while detractors claim it threatens over a hundred years of antitrust tradition by merging the assets of major rivals into one organization .

The Stargate alliance brings together six major AI industry players, many of whom have overlapping or conflicting interests. For example, Oracle and OpenAI have previously competed for cloud service contracts, while Nvidia leads the GPU sector and

has aimed to lessen its dependence on external chip suppliers. By bringing these competitors together, Stargate reduces direct rivalry across key layers of the AI ecosystem, from hardware to cloud platforms. Yale Law School’s Madhavi Singh cautions in an upcoming publication that the project “blurs the distinction between collaboration and collusion,” possibly breaching the Sherman and Clayton Acts, which forbid deals that limit competition or endanger future market rivalry .

Singh’s research points to the danger of “cartel-like conduct,” where partners may coordinate pricing or share proprietary technology to remove competition. For instance, Oracle’s previous strategy of underpricing Microsoft in cloud services could disappear if both companies now cooperate within Stargate. Likewise, Microsoft’s efforts to develop its own GPUs to rival Nvidia may lose momentum if they work together under this alliance.

that limits innovation and leaves consumers with fewer options and higher prices, Singh asserts.

Despite these warnings, Stargate has encountered little pushback from regulators or politicians. The Trump administration has promoted the project as a key asset in the U.S.-China technology competition, and lawmakers such as Sen. Ted Cruz have called it a blueprint for “winning the AI race.” Even the FTC, which blocked Nvidia’s 2021 attempt to acquire Arm over monopoly concerns, has not commented on Stargate.

, especially after Elon Musk, then head of DOGE, ridiculed the venture as a “crack pipe fantasy” on X, questioning whether the partners have the financial resources to make it happen.

Globally, Stargate’s influence is growing. South Korea has recently agreed to work with the UAE’s Stargate AI campus, a five-gigawatt project led by Abu Dhabi’s MGX and U.S. collaborators like OpenAI and Nvidia.

, between President Lee Jae Myung and UAE leader Mohamed bin Zayed, covers joint efforts in energy, defense, and advanced manufacturing, with projected economic gains surpassing 150 trillion won ($105 billion). At the same time, Oracle and SoftBank are building data centers in Texas and Ohio, to speed up construction.

The scale of Stargate—on par with the combined costs of the International Space Station and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Economic City—has fueled further debate about its future effects. Singh argues that the project’s setup, which concentrates authority among a few corporations, could cement monopolies in the chip and cloud markets, where dominance is already significant. “This isn’t just about current competition,” she explains. “It’s about securing control for generations to come.”

As the global AI race intensifies, the Stargate story highlights a larger question: Can governments promote national security and economic growth without undermining the competitive forces that have historically driven innovation? For now, the answer is as unclear as the project’s internal decision-making.