OpenAI’s Stargate: The Compute Power Shift That Will Define AI’s Future
Why Compute Is the Key to AI Dominance
AI Stops Being Software and Becomes Infrastructure
AI started as a software revolution. The best minds, the best research, the best algorithms. That’s what mattered.
Not anymore.
Now, it’s about something else entirely.
There are only so many ways to optimize an architecture. The top AI labs—OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic—are all playing in the same sandbox. They’re using the same research and the same fundamental breakthroughs.
So when everyone has access to the same knowledge base, architectures, and talent pool, where does the next competitive edge come from?
Infrastructure.
That’s the shift. AI isn’t just about software anymore. It’s about hardware.
Right now, compute is a bottleneck. Every AI company competes for a finite supply of GPUs, waiting in line for cloud resources, and dealing with rising costs and hardware shortages.
But what if you could remove that bottleneck? What if you could own compute outright instead of renting it?
That’s what Stargate is.
OpenAI isn’t just training bigger models. It’s making a play to own the means of intelligence itself. And that changes everything.
What Is Stargate? OpenAI’s Play to Own the AI Future
For those who haven’t tracked every twist in the AI arms race, Stargate is OpenAI’s plan to build the world’s most powerful AI supercomputing network.
Right now, even OpenAI—the dominant player in the space—doesn’t fully control its compute. It relies on Microsoft’s Azure to train and deploy its most advanced models.
Stargate eliminates that dependence.
Here’s what we know:
A $500 billion project backed by SoftBank, Oracle, OpenAI, and Microsoft.
$100 billion in phase one—massive AI data centers, starting in Texas.
Potentially the largest AI training cluster ever built.
How OpenAI Is Securing AI’s Most Critical Resource
Until recently, the AI revolution was unfolding as a predictable tale of software, algorithms, and almost democratized access. Anyone with a good idea, decent GPUs, and lots of training data could compete.
At least, in theory.
The opening chapter was all scrappy optimism—the indie band era of artificial intelligence, where innovation bubbled from unexpected places.
That era, it seems, is about to be over. Something has shifted.
Stargate is the line in the sand.
It’s no longer just about better chatbots or smarter enterprise tools. Those are byproducts, not the endgame.
Stargate is about owning the infrastructure upon which all artificial intelligence will be built.
If AI is the new electricity, then compute is the power grid.
And OpenAI just decided to build its own.
This means that compute isn’t just a bottleneck anymore.
It may have become the whole business model.
The Hidden Asymmetries of OpenAI’s Stargate
When OpenAI announced Stargate, my first thought wasn’t about the technology itself. It was about the asymmetries it would create.
Because this isn’t just an AI breakthrough; it’s a power shift. It’s a strategic move that will separate those who own the means of AI production from those who stumble behind.
Three asymmetries stand out, three imbalances that I believe will define the future of AI, or at least shape it considerably:
Compute Asymmetry – Who controls the power to train next-gen AI?
Intelligence Asymmetry – Who gets access to the most advanced models?
Geopolitical Asymmetry – How does this reshape the global balance of power?
1. Compute Asymmetry: Who Gets Access and Who Gets Left Behind?
For years, compute has been considered a bottleneck; an obstacle baked into AI’s progress.
But OpenAI just removed that bottleneck—for itself, anyway.
Now, if you’re one of OpenAI’s competitors, you have two options:
Follow suit and build your own AI infrastructure.
Fall behind.
To be clear, most won’t be able to follow suit.
The new order is no longer just about who builds the smartest AI. It’s about who controls the machines that make AI possible. And when you own the factory, you decide what gets built.
The Road to Stargate: How AI’s Compute Race Escalated
The biggest shifts in technology don’t happen when someone invents a better algorithm. They happen when someone changes the scale.
Look at the early days of AI. The first neural networks? Trained on off-the-shelf hardware. GPT-2? Ran on borrowed cloud servers.
Any smart, ambitious team could build something impactful. Compute wasn’t the limiting factor.
Then the models got bigger.
GPT-2 had 1.5 billion parameters. GPT-4? More than a trillion.
What changed? Not some radical new algorithm. It was simply more compute.
Sam Altman has been open about this: AI doesn’t get smarter through innovation alone. It gets smarter through brute force.
Take a model like GPT-4, train it on more data for longer, give it more hardware, and intelligence scales in a predictable, almost mechanical way.
Which brings us to Stargate.
Why OpenAI Is Betting Big on Compute with Stargate
If more compute = better AI, then the next step is obvious.
Build the biggest compute network on the planet.
That’s exactly what Stargate is. It’s not just an AI cluster.
It’s vertical integration at a scale no one else has—yet.
The moment OpenAI owns its infrastructure, it stops playing the same game as everyone else.
Instead of queuing up for GPUs like the rest of the industry, they get:
First pick of the latest hardware.
More compute at lower cost.
The ability to train longer, bigger, and faster than anyone else.
And once that happens?
The runaway effect kicks in.
More compute = bigger models.
Bigger models = better performance.
Better performance = more users.
More users = more revenue.
More revenue = more investment in compute.
And just like that, A self-reinforcing loop of AI dominance that will make OpenAI faster, better, and cheaper than anyone else.
The implications will probably be profound in unimaginable ways.
To begin with, any company, researcher, or nation without a Stargate-level compute cluster will likely compete in the minor leagues.
As a result the gap between the AI “haves” and the AI “have-nots” will not just widen; it will do so exponentially.
2. Intelligence Asymmetry: The Divide Between AI Elites and Everyone Else
Intelligence has never been evenly distributed.
For most of history, access to knowledge wasn’t a given; it was gated.
Medieval scribes kept manuscripts locked away, renaissance scholars needed wealthy patrons, and the best education wasn’t for everyone, just those who could afford it.
And now, AI is about to widen that gap in a way we’ve not seen before.
The AI that runs on Stargate? That’s not the one you’ll get.
Not in your free-tier ChatGPT. And probably not in the premium enterprise version, either. The most advanced models, trained at full scale, with unrestricted capabilities, will be locked away. Accessible only to OpenAI and a select group of partners.
This isn’t speculation. It’s how these things work.
There will probably be at least three tiers:
Consumer AI – Friendly, filtered, and safe for mass use.
Enterprise AI – More capable, tailored for business, but still boxed in by corporate and regulatory guardrails.
Stargate AI – The real thing. The full-force intelligence engine. Reserved for those who can afford it.
But this isn’t just about getting a better AI model.
Once intelligence crosses a certain threshold, once it stops being just "better" and starts being qualitatively different, it stops being about software. It becomes something else entirely.
The Superintelligence Threshold
Sam Altman has been direct about OpenAI’s long-term ambition: superintelligence.
Not just a smarter chatbot. Not just a more efficient research assistant. But an intelligence capable of scientific discovery, reasoning beyond human capacity, and problem-solving at a scale we can’t fully grasp.
OpenAI’s researchers believe that one or two more jumps in compute could push us into true superintelligence territory.
Stargate provides that scale.
Altman calls it a “glorious future”—where AI can cure diseases, drive breakthroughs, and unlock untapped human potential.
But before we get there, something else will happen first:
The largest cognitive gap in history.
Because this isn’t just about marginal improvements anymore.
It’s about the emergence of intelligence so far beyond ours that it has the potential to reshape economies, industries, and even the structure of decision-making itself.
The most important question: who gets to wield it? Certainly not you or me.
3. Geopolitical Asymmetry: Why AI Is the New Battleground for Global Power
AI isn’t just a corporate story. It never was. It’s a national security asset.
Weapons programs, financial markets, cybersecurity, intelligence operations. Whoever dominates AI doesn’t just win in tech. They win everywhere.
The U.S. and China have been locked in an AI arms race for years, knowing that whoever controls AI’s future will influence the world’s technological, economic, and military landscape.
With Stargate, OpenAI isn’t just positioning itself at the top of the AI race. It’s positioning the U.S. as the epicenter of global AI power.
Because once you own the infrastructure, you decide who gets access.
China sees it. China will respond.
Because the other untenable choice is for China to fall permanently behind.
Beijing has one existential question:
Does it build its own Stargate? Or risk falling permanently behind?
If history is any guide, China will do whatever it takes to close the gap.
While the U.S. and China scale AI infrastructure, Europe debates AI regulations. How to control it, and how to mitigate its risks. The result? The continent is falling behind in the AI power race.
As AI transitions from being just a technology to becoming a strategic asset, access to the most powerful systems will probably be granted selectively, through national security agreements and corporate alliances.
The global AI landscape won’t just be uneven. It will also become polarized.
Will Stargate Become AI’s Ultimate Power Grid?
We like to believe monopolies have a breaking point. When power centralizes, there comes a tipping point, and something cracks. But is that always true?
Some monopolies last. Utilities don’t just collapse. When a system becomes too essential, too embedded, it stops being something you compete with and starts being something you depend on.
We’ve seen it before with power grids, water systems, cloud computing, global financial networks. These aren’t just industries; they’re infrastructure. And infrastructure doesn’t get disrupted easily. It becomes the foundation upon which everything else is built.
What if Stargate isn’t just an AI project, but a utility for intelligence itself?
A power grid, except instead of electricity, it’s compute. Instead of customers, it has tenants. And AI startups, research labs, entire industries rent access, because there’s no alternative.
At some point, a counterforce will appear. A breakthrough that reduces the reliance on compute. A new way to train AI that doesn’t require brute force. A shift that makes infrastructure dominance meaningless.
But that doesn’t exist yet.
And until it does, OpenAI isn’t just ahead.
It’s writing the rules as it goes.
© 2025 Wide Open Brain and F. J. Khan, PhD. All rights reserved. No part of this content may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author.