OpenAI has officially confirmed that it is the company behind Oracle’s massive $30 billion-per-year data center deal, as previously disclosed in Oracle’s SEC filing. While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has not acknowledged the exact dollar amount, he confirmed the partnership in a post on X and in a company blog post. The deal, now revealed to be for 4.5 gigawatts of computing capacity, is part of the ambitious Stargate project—OpenAI’s $500 billion initiative to build the most powerful AI infrastructure in the world.
The agreement represents a seismic shift in the data center industry. Oracle reported $24.5 billion in cloud services revenue in its fiscal 2025 across all customers combined, meaning this single OpenAI contract more than doubles Oracle’s annual cloud revenue projections. The news sent Oracle stock soaring and temporarily elevated CTO Larry Ellison to the position of second-richest person in the world.
The scale of the project is staggering. A 4.5-gigawatt data center, being constructed at the Stargate I site in Abilene, Texas, would require energy equivalent to two Hoover Dams—enough to power four million homes. While the $30 billion figure is jaw-dropping, it doesn’t cover the full cost of the build or operations. Both Oracle and OpenAI will continue investing heavily in infrastructure, and Oracle alone is set to spend $25 billion this fiscal year, after investing $21.2 billion last year, primarily on data centers.
OpenAI’s reported annual recurring revenue recently surpassed $10 billion, up from around $5.5 billion a year ago. That makes the Oracle deal three times larger than its current income, not even accounting for other major expenses like salaries, research, and additional cloud contracts. This suggests that OpenAI is making a long-term bet on becoming the backbone of future AI infrastructure, even if it means temporarily stretching its financial capacity.
Despite the scale and cost, the partnership offers enormous upside. Oracle secures a long-term cloud anchor tenant, and OpenAI ensures dedicated infrastructure for its expanding AI ambitions. If successful, this deal could reshape not only the cloud services landscape but also how AI platforms are built, powered, and delivered at planetary scale.
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