In July 2025, OpenAI and Microsoft announced their ambitious plan to build one of the largest AI supercomputing networks in the world, code-named Stargate. With initial capacity reaching over 1 GW in Texas and future sites under consideration across multiple U.S. states and the UAE, Stargate isn’t just an infrastructure project—it’s a geopolitical move.

This shift signals something profound: Compute is becoming a sovereign resource. And as more governments recognize AI infrastructure as a lever of national power, the world is entering a new era of sovereign compute—where capacity, location, and control of AI systems are tied directly to economic competitiveness, defense strategy, and digital self-determination.

What Is Stargate, and Why Does It Matter?

Stargate is a long-term initiative between OpenAI and Microsoft to scale AI infrastructure globally. According to Reuters, it involves building advanced data centers capable of supporting massive AI training and inference workloads, with energy demands rivaling entire cities.

The goal is to enable faster, safer development of next-gen foundation models while maintaining control over compute access, energy efficiency, and safety alignment.

With expected costs of up to $100 billion over time (The Information, 2024), Stargate represents not just technological ambition, but political will.

Compute Sovereignty: The New Digital Arms Race

Historically, nations competed over oil, steel, or rare earth metals. Today, the battleground is compute.

Governments are increasingly viewing AI infrastructure as a matter of national security. The U.S. CHIPS and Science Act, export controls to China on high-end GPUs, and partnerships with national cloud providers like G42 in the UAE all reflect this trend.

Compute sovereignty means:

• The ability to host, govern, and scale large AI systems within national or regional boundaries

• Control over the physical hardware and regulatory frameworks that shape AI development

• Reduced dependency on foreign infrastructure, especially from adversarial states

As Brookings Institution noted, governance over compute is essential to maintaining democratic values and safety in AI.

Stargate UAE and the Rise of Regional AI Power Centers

In 2024, OpenAI partnered with Abu Dhabi-based G42 to launch Stargate UAE, marking the first international deployment of a national-scale compute cluster under the OpenAI for Countries umbrella.

This partnership underscores a growing trend: smaller but tech-forward nations are asserting leadership in AI by investing directly in sovereign infrastructure.

But this raises critical questions:

• Who governs these partnerships?

• What transparency exists in data and model usage?

• Will countries have the ability to adapt models to local norms, or simply run what’s given?

These issues must be addressed through clear public-private accountability frameworks.

Infrastructure as Strategy, Not Just Support

Stargate isn’t just powering models—it’s shaping how the global AI ecosystem will operate.

Infrastructure determines:

• Who gets early access to frontier capabilities

• Where safety, evaluation, and guardrails are applied

• How values are encoded into large-scale systems

As Georgetown’s CSET explains, compute access is now one of the strongest predictors of which actors will dominate AI research and deployment.

Nations without sovereign infrastructure will be left dependent—and potentially vulnerable.

Toward Ethical and Inclusive Compute Infrastructure

While Stargate reflects incredible technical advancement, it must also reflect inclusive governance.

OpenAI and Microsoft have the opportunity to:

• Build regional infrastructure with transparency and public oversight

• Partner with governments on localization, alignment, and safety auditing

• Commit to climate-conscious and human-centered infrastructure design

The infrastructure we build today will determine who shapes AI tomorrow.

Final Thoughts: Sovereignty Must Include Safety

Sovereign compute isn't just about owning chips. It’s about designing systems that serve people—not just markets or geopolitical interests.

Projects like Stargate could either centralize power—or distribute it. It all depends on the principles behind the infrastructure.

Because the future of AI will be built not just in code—but in concrete, cables, and kilowatts.

And that makes infrastructure not just a technical question—but a test of global values.

Sources:

• Reuters (2025). OpenAI’s Stargate plans

• The Information (2024). OpenAI and Microsoft’s $100B supercomputer

• Brookings Institution (2024). Why compute governance matters

• Georgetown CSET (2023). Computing power and AI development