Altman and Microsoft employees have divided supercomputers into five stages (representative)
Washington:
Microsoft and OpenAI are planning a data center project costing up to $100 billion that will include an artificial intelligence supercomputer called “Stargate,” media reported on Friday.
The companies did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
Citing people involved in private conversations about the proposal, The Information said Microsoft would likely be responsible for financing the project, which would cost 100 times more than some of the largest current data centers.
OpenAI’s next major artificial intelligence upgrade is expected to be launched early next year, the report said, adding that Microsoft executives hope to launch Stargate as early as 2028.
The proposed US supercomputer would be the largest in a series of installations the companies plan to build over the next six years, the report added.
The Information attributed the tentative cost of $100 billion to a person who spoke to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and a person who viewed some of Microsoft’s initial cost estimates. It did not identify those sources.
Altman and Microsoft employees have divided supercomputers into five phases, with Stargate being the fifth. Microsoft is reportedly developing a smaller Phase 4 supercomputer for OpenAI, which it plans to launch around 2026.
The report said that Microsoft and OpenAI are in the middle of the third phase of the five-phase plan, and most of the costs in the next two phases involve purchasing the required artificial intelligence chips.
“We are always planning the next generation of infrastructure innovations to continue to advance artificial intelligence capabilities,” Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw said in a statement to the publication.
The proposed effort could cost more than $115 billion, more than triple Microsoft’s capital expenditures on servers, buildings and other equipment last year, the report said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
