AI execs defend Trump Stargate project: 'This is a very large investment that affects all of humanity'
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Oracle founder Larry Ellison and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son comment on President Donald Trump’s Stargate AI investment project on ‘Special Report.’
The three tech CEOs who have joined forces in President Donald Trump's multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence infrastructure project defended the venture as an investment that "impacts all of humanity."
"This is a very large investment that affects all of humanity," Oracle founder Larry Ellison told Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier on "Special Report" on Tuesday.
President Trump unveiled a massive AI infrastructure project from the private sector on the first full day of his second term in office on Tuesday.
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During a speech at the White House, Trump announced that Softbank, OpenAI and Oracle have joined forces for a project called Stargate to build data centers in the U.S. for powering AI.
Ellison emphasized the Stargate investment could bring a "revolution" in healthcare and other industries.
"It's really a revolution in medicine. But it's a revolution in many other industries as well. Medicine just touches us all," he said. "Yes, it takes a huge investment, but the result of the investment will be vaccines that prevent cancers, personalized medicine where we never again run into a problem like COVID-19 before, because we get an early warning. We know when COVID starts, when there are a handful of patients, rather than having to wait until it's become an epidemic and very difficult to control."
The initial investment for the project will be $100 billion, with plans to expand to $500 billion over the next four years. The first data center built under the initiative will be in Texas, and it will eventually expand to other states.
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"This means we can create AI and AGI (artificial general intelligence) in the United States of America. [It] wouldn't have been obvious that this was possible," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said. "I think with a different president it might not have been possible. But we are thrilled to get to do this, and I think it'll be great for Americans, great for the whole world."
Altman conceded AI pioneers need to be "responsible" and develop the technology "carefully."
"I think people are really good, and people will do, on balance, incredible things with this technology. The scale of this investment, obviously, is huge. And what I think that says about the likely progress of the technology, at least what all of us believe, is correspondingly huge. But I have enormous faith we'll figure it out," he said.
Trump was working to drum up private business investments in the U.S. prior to his second term. Last month, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son joined Trump in announcing Softbank's plans for a $100 billion investment in America aimed at generating 100,000 new jobs.
"For the better humanity of our future, we need big capital to invest into the project. We cannot do it with small money. We have to do the big investment for the good of humanity," Son said, touting Trump's vow to usher in a golden age in America.
A White House official told FOX Business that post-election, Trump has now secured $1 trillion in private investment for the U.S. in various projects.
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FOX Business' Breck Dumas contributed to this report.