Nvidia (NVDA) shares rose more than 4% on Wednesday to help lead the tech sector and some chip stocks higher after Trump announced a $500 billion AI infrastructure project.

The project creates a company called Stargate, which will initially be financed by SoftBank (SFTBY), OpenAI, Oracle (ORCL), and MGX based in the United Arab Emirates.

Stargate was called Nvidia, along with Microsoft (MSFT) and British chip designer Arm (ARM), as “key initial technology partners” for the project, which aims to build the U.S. data centers needed to power artificial intelligence. OpenAI said Stargate would “begin deploying $100 billion immediately” and invest up to $500 billion over the next four years.

Nvidia’s gain on Wednesday boosted its market capitalization to $3.6 trillion, once again making it Apple’s biggest company in the world (AAPL).

Meanwhile, Microsoft shares were up nearly 4% early Wednesday, while Arm was up more than 14%. Oracle shares rose 7% and SoftBank rose more than 10%.

“Stargate will build the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of AI advances, and that will include building colossal data centers, very, very massive structures.” Trump said at a briefing tuesday “These buildings, they’re big, beautiful buildings, they’re going to employ a lot of people.”

Trump said the effort is aimed at maintaining America’s lead in artificial intelligence development ahead of China.

The ad follows a bunch of executive orders from the Biden administration on artificial intelligence last week with the aim of restricting the flow of AI chips to China and accelerating the construction of data centers in the US.

“This comes at a critical time as we expect Trump to aggressively pursue further AI investment in the US,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note to investors late Tuesday. Ives noted that the project is “part of a larger game of high-stakes poker with China.”

After the announcement, Elon Musk targeted OpenAI on his social media platform X. In response to an OpenAI post about Stargate, he wrote “They don’t actually have the money.”

OpenAI he estimated he lost $5 billion in 2024 though generated just $3.7 billion in revenue.

Tech stocks generally rallied on news of big AI investment. Dell (DELL) and Super Microcomputer (SMCI), which make servers use Nvidia chips, were up about 4%.

Laura Bratton is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Bluesky @laurabratton.bsky.social. Email her at [email protected].

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