Okay, let's devise a hypothetical projection. Grounding this in Google's current financial power and AI compute inventory, here is a multi-phase forecast of what will likely happen in the escalating competition with Stargate.
- Google's Financial Power: Google is a financial juggernaut. Fresh off its Q2 2025 earnings, Alphabet reported quarterly revenue of over $96 billion and has just shocked investors by raising its planned 2025 capital expenditure (CapEx) to a massive $85 billion. This isn't just a budget; it's a war chest. Their Cloud division is surging, growing at 32% and now operating at a $50B+ annual run rate, providing both the mandate and the cash to fund this spending.
- Google's Compute Inventory: Google is not waiting. It is actively deploying its 6th-gen "Trillium" and 7th-gen "Ironwood" TPUs globally. Ironwood, its first chip designed specifically for inference, boasts a 2x performance-per-watt improvement over its predecessor. This means Google's existing, operational fleet of AI accelerators is already a generation ahead in terms of efficiency.
- Stargate's Position: The $500 billion Stargate coalition is a declared threat with immense potential, but today it is primarily a construction project in Texas. It has capital and partners, but it does not yet have operational data centers or a functioning compute fabric at scale.
This is Google's window of opportunity. With Stargate focused on pouring concrete and securing power lines, Google will leverage its massive head start to reshape the battlefield.
- Financial Blitzkrieg: Google will not stand still. Expect their annual CapEx to push towards $100 billion by 2026. They will use their immense cash flow from Search and the booming profits from Cloud to fund an unprecedented global buildout. A key part of this will be massive investments in energy, like the recently announced $25 billion plan for data centers and hydropower in the PJM electric grid region, aimed at securing the power needed to run their AI.
- Market Capture Offensive: Google Cloud will become ruthlessly aggressive. The goal is to make its TPU-powered infrastructure indispensable to the AI economy before Stargate is a viable option. We're already seeing this with Meta signing a $10 billion deal to use Google Cloud for its AI infrastructure. Expect more blockbuster deals as Google leverages its current superiority to lock in major AI companies, startups, and enterprises for multi-year contracts.
- The Efficiency Narrative: Google’s messaging will hammer one point home: performance-per-watt. As the world awakens to the monumental energy costs of AI, Google will position its custom, liquid-cooled TPU architecture as the only sustainable and responsible way to scale. They will release white papers and benchmarks demonstrating how a model trained on their infrastructure uses a fraction of the energy of a GPU-based equivalent, directly targeting the perceived weakness of Stargate's brute-force model.
Outcome of Phase 1: By the time Stargate's first major facilities come online in 2028, the market will look very different. Google will have doubled down, using its revenue and existing infrastructure to create a deep competitive moat. Many of the most promising AI companies will already be deeply integrated into the Google Cloud ecosystem.
This is when the first Stargate data centers, armed with tens of thousands of next-generation accelerators, become operational. This will trigger a capability shock, as OpenAI will have access to a level of raw compute previously unimaginable.
- Stargate's Opening Move: Powered by Stargate, OpenAI will likely release a new flagship model (a potential GPT-6 or a true AGI contender) whose sheer scale and capability are staggering. It will perform tasks that are simply impossible on any other existing system, resetting the bar for what AI can do. This will be Stargate's "Sputnik moment."
- Google’s Strategic Response: Asymmetric Warfare: Google will recognize that matching Stargate's $500 billion spend dollar-for-dollar is a fool's errand. Instead, it will pivot the conflict from a battle of scale to a battle of intelligence.
- The "Gemini Efficiency" Leap: Google will unveil a next-generation Gemini model that is not just powerful, but radically efficient. It will be designed from the ground up to maximize the unique architecture of their new TPU generation (e.g., an 8th or 9th-gen chip). Their key claim will be that they can achieve 90% of the Stargate model's capability with only 40% of the compute and energy cost. This move reframes the entire competition around architectural superiority, not just raw power.
- The Rise of Counter-Alliances: To counter the Stargate coalition, Google will likely form its own formal alliances. This could involve partnering with sovereign AI clouds in Europe and Asia, or deepening ties with other major tech players who feel threatened by the OpenAI/Microsoft/Oracle bloc.
- Commercialization Dominance: While Stargate is a purpose-built AGI machine for OpenAI, Google's global cloud will be a revenue-generating engine. They will rapidly productize their efficient AI models, offering them at competitive prices to millions of businesses via Vertex AI, while Stargate's compute remains a highly exclusive and expensive resource.
Projected Outcome: The AI world will bifurcate. There will not be one winner. Instead, two dominant ecosystems will emerge:
- The Stargate Ecosystem: Centered around OpenAI and its partners, pushing the absolute bleeding edge of AI capability with a focus on achieving AGI, largely unconstrained by commercial pressures.
- The Google Ecosystem: A vertically integrated powerhouse focused on deploying hyper-efficient AI at a global, commercial scale. It will power a broader range of applications and businesses, funding its own parallel, but more resource-conscious, AGI research.
This projection sees Google using its current financial and technological advantages not to meet the Stargate project head-on, but to strategically outmaneuver it, turning the coming battle into a competition it is better equipped to win.