The costs of chips are rising as tech giants shell out billions on computing power. OpenAI said its $500 billion Stargate data-center program was ahead of schedule, but growing demand meant it had to “build more compute, faster.”

The program has changed shape since its Jan. 2025 announcement — originally a joint venture with several funders, it has now become a series of bilateral agreements, the Financial Times reported. Hyperscaling money is still pouring in; Meta may spend $145 billion on AI this year, for example.

Tech giants announced major revenue boosts this month, but the outlays have pushed up AI costs. An Nvidia executive said compute was so expensive that it was still cheaper, for now, to hire humans.