• January 27, 2025
• 6:05 am

This article was originally published by The Real WV. Sign up for their weekly newsletter here.

By Stephen Baldwin, RealWV

On Tuesday of last week, President Donald Trump announced a $500 billion private investment in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology over the next five years in America. It’s called Stargate. And according to West Virginia officials, the Mountain State could play a key role in its development. 

The project, which Trump called “the largest AI infrastructure project in history, by far,” includes three partners–OpenAI (which developed ChatGPT and leads the way on AI technologies), Oracle (a cloud-based computer company which will run the data centers needed to process massive amounts of information), and SoftBank (a Japanese company financing the project). 

President Trump promised to remove governmental guardrails on the emerging technology. He also spoke about the need to move quickly due to “great competition” across the globe to excel in AI, promising that America would take the lead with Stargate. 

“What we want to do is we want to keep it in this country,” Trump said. “China is a competitor, others are competitors…I’m going to help a lot through emergency declarations because we have an emergency. We have to get this stuff built.” 

The physical infrastructure needed to advance AI includes large amounts of electricity to run data centers. Larry Ellison, Chief Technology Officer at Oracle, said 10 data centers will be needed initially with another 10 soon thereafter. Each one needs to be at least half a million square feet. 

According to Forbes, there are two main subtypes of AI data centers. “The AI data center segment is even subdividing further into training AI data centers, which handle intensive data processing and machine learning training, and inference AI data centers, which focus on deploying trained models in real-world applications and delivering AI-driven insights in real-time.”

Logan County eyed for data center in late 2024

In late 2024, then-Governor Jim Justice nearly called the legislature into special session to greenlight a data center in Logan. According to Justice’s Chief of Staff, Brian Abraham, the project, by an unnamed multinational corporation, could be valued at $30 billion. Brad McElhinny of Metronews reported the story at the time.

Our sources say that corporation is already operating in West Virginia.

The special session was cancelled due to logistical concerns over which set of legislators would need to go into session, those who were finishing their terms or those who were beginning theirs. 

“This would have been the project of a lifetime,” Abraham said at the time. 

Speaking later at a press briefing, Justice echoed Abraham’s sentiments and said, “I think it’s surely still in the mix.”

Senator “confident” data centers will play a role in state’s economic development

Senator Glenn Jeffries (R, Putnam) chairs the Senate Economic Development Committee and says he is “confident.” 

“This kind of investment from the Trump Administration is encouraging, and I think West Virginia is in a prime position to capitalize. For the last couple of years, we have been laying the groundwork to attract these kinds of high-technology developments.” 

Speaking on News Nation over the weekend, Kevin O’Leary (a venture capitalist, shown below, and better known as Mr. Wonderful) spoke about his interest in building AI data centers and said, “I’ve got projects in all these locations…West Virginia, North Dakota, and Alberta, Canada.” 

O’Leary was not involved in the Logan County project but maintains an interest in West Virginia data centers.

The reason he chose North Dakota, Alberta, & West Virginia? “They have massive amounts of stranded gas.”

“There’s not enough power anywhere,” he said. “That’s the problem…there’s no power left in the grid, so you have to actually build a turbine, gas powered.” 

He reiterated because of that factor, “There’s only three places you can do this.”

Senator Jeffries says, “They require a tremendous amount of energy, and West Virginia is the perfect location to provide them, not only with the traditional coal and natural gas-fired electricity, but we also have made steps to expand the ability for these kinds of companies to use renewables to help offset the energy load they require.” 

Jeffries says the state still has “work to do” for an AI data center to come to West Virginia, “but we are making progress and with support from our Congressional delegation and President Trump, I feel confident.” 

Stay tuned to RealWV for further updates on this developing story.