In this monologue, a local Abilene resident and owner of Howdy Media explains the newly‑started AI infrastructure initiative dubbed Project Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and MGX. He outlines the project's technical scale—a 1.2 GW power capacity, a 482,000 sq ft single‑story data hall built by developer Crusoe on Lancium land, with millions of Nvidia AI chips ordered—and its construction timeline (groundbreaking June 2024, expected completion mid‑2026). He emphasizes the economic impact on Abilene, citing thousands of construction jobs (≈2,200 on‑site) and the promise of long‑term employment and local revenue. The speaker shares his personal experience using AI tools (ChatGPT, Grok, Poppy AI, Opus Clips) to cut costs in his small media business, advocating that AI will create new roles rather than replace humans. He describes the broader vision of advancing toward artificial general intelligence, the potential benefits for military, government, and industry, and urges local business owners to adopt AI for efficiency. The video concludes with a call for community comments and subscriptions.
Chapters
All right, possibly the biggest AI infrastructure initiative has started, and Bloomberg recently put out a video giving a tour of this AI data center here in Abilene, Texas. And I just wanted to talk about it as a local Abilene resident. I own and operate a business. I'm raising my kids here. We have a whole community that we have a great network with, and I wanted to kind of talk about what it is that's going on as well as how it's going to affect you, especially if you're a business owner moving forward, because that's what we all have to think about. If you run a large business or a small business, this is going to impact you in some sort of way. And so first of all, I wanted to go over what exactly it is, and this is going to be a very basic foundation of what it is for those of you who are just now hearing about it. And you can do more research to look at all the details, but basically it's a project joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and MGX, all big tech companies focusing on AI. I believe SoftBank is a, an investment company, um, overseas. But basically they all partnered together and they committed $500 billion to build these infrastructure databases that AI is going to need in order to take it to the next level. And so we're kind of capped at the amount of chips and CPU that we have right now in the United States. And so they're going to be building 5 of these locations all around the country, and they're starting with the first one in Abilene. And I believe they're calling it a mega factory. So this has obviously raised some concerns for local Abilenes, and it's also got a lot of people really excited. It's going to be putting Abilene kind of on the map. Um, the Air Force Base kind of has already done that, but this is going— this is something that's been recognized nationally from the Oval Office. And so everybody's getting real excited. Um, this is technically a smaller town. I think there's only 150,000-ish people here. I could be wrong, don't quote me, but it's huge for the town of Abilene, and it's creating thousands of jobs. Like, literally already, I believe there's about 1,200 people— or no, 2,200 people on site as of right now doing the construction side of things, building these buildings. And it's supposed to be finished on, I think, in the summer of 2026. And so it's a big deal. It's a really big deal. And it is very interesting to me just because I've been watching all of this AI stuff develop and advance so quickly. It's going to be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of years with AI. And I personally know I use AI every single day and I'm very bullish on the AI movement. Just because I've seen the benefits of how many hours it can save me, how much money it can save me. I had a buddy tell me the other day they were able to, um, fire half of their software engineers at his company and just use an AI bot that is trained to do exactly that. And I, I mean, it's probably $30 a month, which is mind-blowing. They, they were able to cut hundreds of thousands of dollars of overhead off just right there. And I'm bullish because I think AI is going to create new jobs and different jobs, and I don't think they're going to replace everything that humans can do. I think it's just going to improve what we're doing, uh, as far as how fast we can get things done and how cost efficient that we can do. And as a business owner, I, I think that we only have— I only have 2 employees and multiple contractors that we work with, and so obviously our budgets aren't as big as tech companies. And so we have to find ways to be creative and do things as efficiently as possible at as low of a cost as we possibly can. Um, obviously there are exceptions like video production work. If you ever need video, call me, we can help out. I run a company called Howdy Media. Um, but we're trying to cut costs and, and the whole AI movement has allowed us to do that using tools like ChatGPT, uh, Grok, 3. We've been using a lot more Poppy AI, Opus Clips. There's all kinds of stuff that can really help with anything. And now the whole idea of an AI agent is coming out where it can actually complete tasks on your machine for you, on, on a browser, and, and all the above. So to get back to this project, it's in Abilene, Texas. Here, um, they're— the developer is a company called Crusoe. They're in partnership with Oracle. on land owned by Lancium. The capacity is going to use 1.2 gigawatts of power, which anything AI chip related is very power hungry. The purpose of these massive factories, um, is to just provide the infrastructure that the AI needs to go to the next level because they're about to release, um, some models called artificial general intelligence. And it's going to be another step and it's going to be almost to where it can think like a human can in various different ways. And it's already honestly really— it does a great job of understanding context and solving very complex questions. And so it's going to be crazy. Right now it just utilizes information that's out there and that we train it on. Pretty soon it's going to be creating new information and doing its own tests in science, math, all of the things, coming up with hopefully some more cures. But yeah, it's crazy. So, um, let's see here. It's going to be 482,000 square foot— square feet. Um, it's gonna be one story, a data hall, just a bunch of servers and chips stacked into a room. Um, they began it in June 2024. Uh, it's scheduled to be completed May 30th of 2025. That's wrong. Oh, the first building, it'll be done hopefully in June. We'll see if that happens. They're going to be using advanced AI chips. They've, they've already ordered millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of chips from Nvidia, which is a massive company who makes these type of advanced chips for computers. And so I'm personally excited about this. The economy is going to be impacted in a more positive way than negative. It's going to bring lots of jobs. It already has. It's providing lots of income. I know multiple people who are involved with these projects, and it's cool to see that not only are they getting to be a part of something that I really think is going to revolutionize— it's going to be a stepping stone and a milestone for AI, and it's happening right here in Abilene, Texas. But they're also making money to feed their families, to pay for their mortgages, all the things. And, and so I see it as a positive. Thing, and it's going to be able to allow these models to advance, and it's going to help everything from our military to our businesses to our government, all of the things. And hopefully you will start to feel the effects of this and saving time and money, and, and it being very, very smart and can notice what context the situation is. And hopefully you can start to see the benefits from it. And I hope this kind of changed your mind or gave you a little bit of a perspective of somebody who is really pro-AI. There's a lot of people who think AI is going to take over the world and take everybody's jobs, which I don't know. I can't tell you what's going to happen in the next 10 years, but AI is definitely, at least for the time, a great thing, especially for business owners. And that's mainly who I try to reach through this YouTube channel is if you own a business, I want to equip you and teach you how to fish instead of giving you a fish type of thing. And that's through video content and AI. Tools, all of the things. And so I'm curious, what do you think about this project? Do you think it's going to be a good thing for the economy of Abilene, Texas, and the other towns that they build it in? Or do you think it's going to be something that we aren't ready for, that we aren't going to be able to power efficiently? But I want to know your opinion down in the comments below. Like I said, I talk about AI video content creation, how to scale your business and convert clients. Um, from the content that you make. And so if that interests you at all, I'd appreciate the subscribe, and we'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.
