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Data Center News Roundup: $500B Stargate Project, Data Centers on the Moon?Data Center News Roundup: $500B Stargate Project, Data Centers on the Moon?
In this week’s top data center news, tech giants unveil a major AI infrastructure project, and a US startup claims its lunar ambitions are within reach.
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With data center news moving faster than ever, we want to make it easy for industry professionals to cut through the noise and find the most important stories of the week.
The Data Center Knowledge News Roundup brings you the latest news and developments across the data center industry – from investments and mergers to security threats and industry trends.
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Opening the Stargate
Multibillion-dollar data center announcements continue at pace this month, as a consortium of tech giants unveiled the Stargate Project – a $500 billion initiative to develop AI infrastructure in the U.S. over the next four years.
Backed by SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX – with Arm, Microsoft, and Nvidia as key technology partners – the project aims to construct 10 data centers, including one already underway in Texas. Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison noted that the venture could scale up to 20 facilities, reflecting its expansive vision.
Announced at the White House with U.S. President Donald Trump in attendance, the Stargate Project promises to create the physical and virtual backbone for next-generation AI advancements.
While the news certainly turned heads, industry experts approached the announcement with measured skepticism, highlighting the ambitious scope of the project and the challenges such an initiative could face in execution.
“Even if you have $500 billion to spend on data centers, will you be able to spend it, and will you be able to get the power?” Omdia analyst Alan Howard told Data Center Knowledge. “The timeline to create a data center can be 5+ years if you’re starting from scratch.”
Technologist Robert Scoble added: “The thing I don't get about Stargate is where is the data? With AI you must always follow the data, not the money. The data is what matters and so far, I don’t see a real dataset involved here.”
New Foundations
In other data center development news this month:
XTX Markets said it will invest more than €1 billion to develop a large-scale data center campus in Kajaani, Finland.
Edged Data Centers cut the ribbon on a new AI-ready data center in Irving, Texas, that brings 24 MW of critical capacity and consumes zero water for cooling.
TerraPower and Sabey Data Centers announced plans to collaborate on integrating advanced nuclear plants into Sabey's data center operations.
AWS plans to invest at least $11 billion in Georgia to expand infrastructure to support AI and cloud technologies.
Castleforge, in partnership with Galaxy Data Centers, has acquired the Redhill Data Center near London, UK.
CtrlS unveiled plans for a 40-acre, 600 MW data center in Hyderabad, India.
Lunar Ambitions
While the Stargate project evokes sci-fi imagery, Lonestar Data Holdings claims it is turning concept into reality by planning the first-ever data center on the moon.
According to a report in Reuters this week, the startup will use SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to launch a “fully assembled data center late next month by integrating it with Intuitive Machines’ moon lander, Athena.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of Lonestar’s lunar ambitions. Data Center Knowledge first covered the company’s plan to place a data center on the moon back in 2022.
In February last year, the Florida-based company announced a successful pilot test of its lunar data storage concept.
We will be watching closely to see how the company’s latest plans develop.
Other Great Reads in DCK This Week
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Building the Backbone of AI: Why Infrastructure Matters in the Race for Adoption
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