Stargate

Stargate is the joint venture announced in January 2025 by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle to build a $500 billion network of AI data centres across the United States and the Gulf. The UAE arm — often called Stargate UAE — encompasses a planned Abu Dhabi facility that forms the international centrepiece of the programme. On 1 April 2026, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps published a military targeting video explicitly naming Stargate UAE as a strike objective, hours after Iranian missile attacks caused AWS to declare hard-down status across Bahrain and Dubai availability zones. Oracle's Dubai data centre had already been struck before the video's release.

The Stargate Project was announced by Sam Altman, Masayoshi Son, and Larry Ellison. The venture's initial domestic phase committed $100 billion in the first four years, with the full $500 billion horizon contingent on commercial returns and regulatory approvals. The capex programme is partly underwritten by workforce reduction: Oracle cut 20,000 to 30,000 employees on 31 March 2026, freeing $8–10 billion annually in salary costs and redirecting the savings into a $156 billion data centre build-out that overlaps directly with Stargate infrastructure.

The IRGC's targeting of Stargate facilities marks the first time an AI infrastructure programme has been explicitly named in a state-affiliated military threat. The IRGC also named Nvidia, Apple, and 15 other US technology firms in the same video, extending the threat surface across the Gulf's emerging AI corridor. Goldman Sachs has estimated that data centre electricity demand from programmes of this scale will add 0.1 percentage points to core US inflation in 2026–27. The dual exposure — physical assets in an active conflict zone and workforce funded by mass redundancies — has made Stargate a focal point for scrutiny of AI's geopolitical and labour footprint.