Microsoft and OpenAI Plan Monumental $100 Billion “Stargate” AI Supercomputer
Microsoft and OpenAI are joining forces on an unprecedented artificial intelligence initiative — a $100 billion supercomputer installation dubbed “Stargate” that could reshape the AI landscape. According to reports from The Information, Stargate would house millions of specialized AI chips and tensor processing units, making it exponentially more powerful than today’s largest data centers.
The $100 billion price tag cited by sources represents just the fifth and final phase of a multi-year roadmap by the two tech giants. Collectively, the full five-phase plan involving a series of supercomputer builds is expected to cost over $115 billion through 2028. Microsoft would likely serve as the primary financier.
“We are always planning for the next generation of infrastructure innovations needed to continue pushing the frontier of AI capability,” a statement by Microsoft spokesperson, declining to comment directly on the Stargate reports.
According to insiders, the quest to acquire the staggering number of AI accelerator chips required is the primary cost driver behind Stargate’s nine-figure budget. Powering the immense computational needs could necessitate up to 5 gigawatts of electricity, potentially tapping alternative energy sources like nuclear.
The supercomputer arms race highlights the breakneck pace of AI development as companies like Microsoft and OpenAI race to advance increasingly complex and capable language models. OpenAI, maker of the viral ChatGPT, is expected to launch its next major AI upgrade in early 2024.
Stargate represents the companies’ bid to massively scale AI training and deployment. While today’s largest cloud providers operate data centers maxing out at 100 megawatts of power draw, Stargate’s projected 5 gigawatts equates to a 50X increase.
“Microsoft has demonstrated its ability to build pioneering AI infrastructure used to train the world’s leading models,” stated the Microsoft spokesperson. “AI capability is our focus.”
The tech giants are already well into phase three of their roadmap. Phase four will see Microsoft develop another powerful AI supercomputer for OpenAI launching around 2026 at an estimated $10 billion cost, per reports.
The unprecedented infrastructure investment underscores the AI race’s quickly escalating stakes. However, sources indicate Microsoft’s continued financial backing hinges on OpenAI delivering tangible returns in improved AI performance and potential “superintelligence” breakthroughs.
As transformative AI models grow exponentially more complex, the ability to train them at scale will separate technology leaders from laggers. The Stargate project represents Microsoft and OpenAI’s moonshot bid to establish dominant AI training capabilities for the future.
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