Stargate was publicly launched in January by President Donald Trump as the largest private‑sector infrastructure push in AI history. With an initial fundraising target of $100 billion rising to $500 billion over four years it is already breaking ground on a sprawling data‑centre campus in Abilene, Texas, and evaluating sites in sixteen additional states. SoftBank, the venture’s financial lead, has pledged tens of billions in a mix of equity and debt, while insurers and private‑equity firms are weighing in to complete the funding round.
As Stargate’s leaders prepare for their first overseas expansion, they have zeroed in on the UK. Sir Keir Starmer’s administration recently convened an AI Energy Council, bringing together ministers, grid operators and Big Tech to tackle delays in power‑connection approvals and negotiate long‑term renewable energy deals. “We want to go where the compute is,” says one Stargate insider. “Britain’s willingness to prioritise data‑centre development and guarantee low‑carbon power at scale makes it incredibly attractive.”
OpenAI itself regards the UK as a top market after the US and has lobbied hard for Europe to simplify its AI Act, which governs high‑risk applications of the technology. The European Commission’s announcement of a €20 billion fund for AI “gigafactories” and its willingness to ease administrative burdens under the AI Act have further boosted the region’s credentials. Germany and France are also under active review, but neither has matched the UK’s recent policy drive to unlock clean power and streamline planning.
Despite the overseas ambitions, Stargate remains squarely focused on its US commitments: the Abilene facility and a series of shovel‑ready projects across the heartland. Yet by eyeing London, Manchester or perhaps an Irish location for its first European node, Stargate would establish the transatlantic compute backbone for the next generation of large‑scale AI models.
The venture’s backers, however, must navigate looming headwinds. Trump’s newly imposed reciprocal tariffs on Chinese‑made servers, GPUs and other hardware threaten to add more than $11 billion in annual costs, according to supply‑chain analysts at Altana. Even so, SoftBank and its consortium believe that by securing favourable host‑nation terms now especially around power and planning they can deliver petascale data centres in multiple continents, anchoring the future of AI innovation.
