Stargate's AI Power Play: National Security or Antitrust Threat?

AI Rivals Unite for Stargate Amid Antitrust Concerns as Yale Scholar Sounds Alarm

In a move that has sparked both admiration and legal scrutiny, a coalition of AI titans-including OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, and SoftBank-has launched Stargate, a $500 billion joint venture hailed by President Donald Trump as the "biggest AI infrastructure project in history." The project, announced in January 2025, aims to consolidate computing power across seven gigawatts of data centers, with facilities spanning Texas, New Mexico, Michigan, Ohio, and the UAE. While proponents frame it as a national imperative to secure U.S. leadership in AI, critics argue it undermines over a century of antitrust principles by pooling the resources of fierce competitors into a single entity according to Yale scholar Madhavi Singh.

The Stargate consortium includes six of the most influential players in AI, each with overlapping or competing interests. Oracle and OpenAI, for instance, have historically vied for cloud-computing contracts, while Nvidia dominates the GPU market and Microsoft has long sought to reduce its reliance on third-party chips. By aligning these rivals, Stargate effectively eliminates head-to-head competition in critical segments of the AI "stack," from infrastructure to cloud services. Madhavi Singh, a Yale Law School researcher, warns in a forthcoming paper that the venture "blurs the lines between cooperation and collusion," potentially violating the Sherman and Clayton Acts, which prohibit agreements that restrain trade or threaten future competition according to Singh.

Singh's analysis highlights the risk of "cartel-like behavior," where partners might coordinate pricing strategies or share intellectual property to eliminate market friction. For example, Oracle's past practice of undercutting Microsoft in cloud pricing could vanish if both firms now act as allies within Stargate. Similarly, Microsoft's push to develop its own GPUs to challenge Nvidia's dominance may falter if the two collaborate under the joint venture. Stargate risks creating a closed ecosystem where innovation is stifled, and customers face higher costs and fewer choices, Singh argues.

Despite these concerns, the project has faced minimal regulatory or political resistance. The Trump administration has positioned Stargate as a strategic asset in the U.S.-China tech rivalry, while lawmakers like Sen. Ted Cruz have praised it as a model for "winning the AI race." Even the FTC, which blocked the 2021 Nvidia-Arm merger over antitrust fears, has remained silent on Stargate. This lack of scrutiny has raised eyebrows, particularly after Elon Musk, then-DOGE head, mocked the project as a "crack pipe fantasy" on X, accusing the partners of lacking the financial wherewithal to fund it.

Internationally, Stargate's reach is expanding. South Korea recently agreed to collaborate on the UAE's Stargate AI campus, a 5-gigawatt initiative led by Abu Dhabi's MGX and U.S. partners like OpenAI and Nvidia. The agreement, signed during a summit, between President Lee Jae Myung and UAE leader Mohamed bin Zayed, includes joint ventures in energy, defense, and advanced manufacturing, with estimated economic benefits exceeding 150 trillion won ($105 billion). Meanwhile, Oracle and SoftBank have partnered to build data centers in Texas and Ohio, leveraging state tax incentives to accelerate deployment.

The project's scale-comparable to the cost of the International Space Station and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah Economic City combined-has further intensified debates about its long-term impact. Singh contends that Stargate's structure, which centralizes power among a handful of firms, could entrench monopolies in chips and cloud services, where market concentration is already high. "This isn't just about today's competition," she says. "It's about locking in dominance for decades."

As the AI race accelerates, the Stargate saga underscores a broader dilemma: Can governments balance national security and economic growth without sacrificing the competitive dynamics that have historically driven technological progress? For now, the answer remains as opaque as the venture's governance structure.