OpenAI Says Oracle Helping Handle Chip Export Controls

The Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas on Sept. 24, 2025. Stargate is a collaboration of OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank.

(Bloomberg) -- OpenAI said that Oracle Corp. has been helping the fast-growing startup expand the build-out of its data centers outside the US, including by dealing with export controls on chips for artificial intelligence work.

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“Oracle has kind of become our one-stop-shop for any country,” Peter Hoeschele, OpenAI’s infrastructure chief, said Wednesday during Oracle’s annual conference. The company understands “our internal security standards” and the policy requirements for OpenAI’s projects, he said.

In addition to massive infrastructure commitments in the US, OpenAI has explored data center plans in countries including the United Arab Emirates, Argentina and Norway.

The US government has placed restrictions on sending cutting-edge semiconductors for AI to some countries. The Trump administration recently approved several billion dollars’ worth of Nvidia Corp. chip exports to American customers including Oracle Corp. for use in projects in the UAE.

OpenAI has announced a variety of multibillion-dollar partnerships with Oracle and other companies, including chipmakers Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Broadcom Inc., to increase the supply of chips and data centers to support its AI software. Those deals have raised concerns among some investors that the spending pledges are based on aggressive growth outlooks and novel financing that may not come to fruition.

Since beginning to work together last year, Oracle and OpenAI have struck agreements for more than 5 gigawatts of AI data center capacity — or enough to power roughly 4 million American homes on average. The deals position OpenAI to be Oracle’s largest customer by far. OpenAI has been diversifying its suppliers of computing needs beyond Microsoft Corp., which is also an investor.

Hoeschele said Oracle has been able to get data centers working quickly and been willing to codesign infrastructure to the startup’s needs, such as a plan to use some AMD chips.

“What you’re helping us do is push some of the more traditional players to really think from a customer-centric viewpoint,” he said on stage to Clay Magouyrk, one of Oracle’s two chief executive officers and the head of the company’s cloud computing push.

Hoeschele said the infrastructure developed by both companies could be used by other Oracle customers in the future.

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Oracle’s “finance team might say — OpenAI is a startup, how can you possibly lean into them for this amount of investment?” Hoeschele said. “The technology that you all have developed and the infrastructure that you’ve developed is so fungible.”

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