OpenAI’s Stargate plans to sell ‘democratic AI’ to the world—while enhancing its soft global power. Will it work?
In January, Openai CEO Sam Altman stood next to President Trump and the leaders of Softbank and Oracle to announce a $ 500 million plan to produce US data centers to this day, the Mega project, called Stargate, has not completed the first planned data center in Abilene, Tex. But it has not stopped Openai from today's new global initiative – this time is aimed at developing an infrastructure globally. While the plan, called Openai for countriesis short of details, it has been a long time in rhetoric casting both Openai and the US as rhetorical actors in the face of authority regimes such as China.
The company said it wanted to spread “Democratic AI,” or “AI that protects and includes prolonged democratic principles.” This includes “freedom for people to choose how they work and direct AI, avoiding the AI government's use to control AIS, and a free market that ensures free competition.”
The effort, Openai continued, would “contribute to the extensive distribution of AI benefits, discouraged the concentration of power, and help advance our mission.” Cooperation closely with the US government, it said, is “the best way to promote democratic AI.”
More concrete, the blog post that expands the expanded Stargate said the goal was to develop overseas data centers; and provide versions of Openai chatgpt chatbots that are customized for the language and culture of each country. It also pledged to strengthen AI's security and safety and launch the national starting fund in individual countries with local Openai funds and capital.
The initiative aligned with the efforts of the Trump administration to win what it considers a fierce AI race at all costs – to protect the US economy as well as prevail at the Geopolitical Ai Chess Game against China. “I think this is a signal that we understand what is at stake,” said Daniel Newman, CEO of analyst firm The Futurum Group in an email – that is, the future economic leadership of the world will decide AI. He pointed to a recent -US US Secretary of Treasury Secretary Scott Bescent, in which he said “US should win AI and Quantum, nothing more.”
To “win” means having soft power through AI, he added, pointing out that Chinese companies have previously used their technology to gain soft power abroad. Over the years, Chinese tech Huawei, for example, “has won many trade in the world by winning Comm and Telco networks,” Bescent explained.
Keegan McBride, a senior policy advisor to the emerging technology and geopolitic at the Tony Blair Institute, a nonprofit advisory organization, said, saying that American policies have been concerned about China's widespread efforts to develop digital infrastructure for the worldly parts of the world. This is especially about the release of January of China's Deepseek R1 reasoning that is said to have performed on leading US models. It is clear that China's AI's AI capabilities are growing rapidly. Following the release of Deepseek and other models such as Alibaba's Qwen, other Chinese models have also deployed worldwide. Because the models are openly available for developers to build, instead of closed models released by Openai, Google and Anthropic, they get a huge momentum.
“This is the US government's awakening and recalls that, when it comes to digital technology, countries should choose the United States as their main partner,” he said in an email to Fate About the global initiative of Openai. He added that Michael Kratosos, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), recently supported American Ai advancing abroad. In a recent -only speech, he said that “our industrial, released at home, and our technical accomplishments from AI to Aerospace, successfully commercialized, can also be a strong instrument of diplomacy abroad and the key components of our international alliances.”
Apparently one of the major partners in the US AI “diplomacy” is Openai, which, in the process of funding AI's infrastructure overseas, also cemented its own global soft power while aiming to expand into a massive multinational corporation. It arrived only days after the company bowed out of pressure by announcing that its nonprofit arm would retain control over its commercial operations. The decision was marked with a huge return -viewed for Openai, which originally wanted to rearrange itself in more than a conventional business.
The key to Openai that gains soft power is a multi-front approach, according to Pierre-Carl Langlais, Cofounder of Paris based on AI Lab Pleias, focusing on developing open AI models trained in open licensed datasets. This includes Openai's plans to release its own open model resources this Tag -Heart to compete with the wishes of other Deepseek and China leader Qwen. The release of a popular model with open “weights,” or the brains behind the model, will help spread Openai to its technology as the model is free to use and open to any developer to develop and work. “I see it as an offensive post-desseek,” Langlais said, adding similar to how AMS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud spread their cloud computing over the last two decades by “offering a ton of credits and then you're locked up.”
So far, Openai has not yet said if any country has been signed in to the Global Stargate rollout. The final goal, Openai said, is 10 projects including US allies. While Softbank is the financing lead for Stargate in the US, Openai developments overseas will be funded by a “bespoke group of partner” in each project, the Financial periods reported. It is unclear whether partners will be companies or countries, or both.
The big question, of course, is this offensive work of this stargate for Openai – especially if there are likely significant strings attached to the use of its services? It can be a gateway for countries to get accessible to Openai's most -advised AI models, in addition to Nvidia's most popular GPU. So far, some countries, even allies like India and Israel, are unable to access them because of Frequent export controls. But yesterday, Bloomberg reported The Trump administration plans to restore some of those restrictions, which, in particular, objected.
But if Stargate is positioned as a layer of infrastructure for global expansion of Openai, those who participate in the new initiative may need to align with certain US policies to obtain access. Unlike standard corporate partnerships, it's not about business customers-about the national government working with Openai to access AI's cutting technology. If the Openai ecosystem becomes the only viable gateway for countries to get AI's most advanced capabilities, it can compromise their control over their data and technology. It also raises deeper questions about human rights including data privacy and state-level monitoring, as well as geopolitical considerations involved in using AI infrastructure controlled US interests.
“The construction of AI achieved the needs of ordinary people in their own languages has the potential to provide a true value,” said Miranda Bogen, director of the AI Governance Lab at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization that promotes digital rights and freedoms. “But working with the states of the country has raised serious questions about how to protect human rights against government requests. It has become a slippery challenge for tech companies over the past two decades; it will be more true of AI.”
But as the US pushes the dominance of AI, Openai may look beyond the creation of “Democratic AI.” It can also be sought to fill its own critical technical research gaps that will help combine the softer power while continuing its mission to develop the version of artificial general intelligence (AGI), or AI that matches or exceeds human abilities in various activities.
Langlais pointed out that while most of the AI funding was -funneled in developing applications for AI, foundation research remains unacceptable. Stargate expanding overseas can create R&D hubs where local startups with deep technical expertise can be targeted by Openai for acqui-riles and strategic partnerships.
“And yes, [that would] It is clear to strengthen the centrality of Openai, ”he said.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
