President Donald Trump unveiled a $500 billion private joint venture to leapfrog U.S. dominance over artificial intelligence. Called Stargate, the project brings together Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), one of the world’s biggest data center operators, OpenAI, and Japan’s SoftBank (OTC:SOBKY) to build “the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of AI.”

The JV partners are contributing $100 billion and the first 1-million-square foot data center was already being built in Texas. More facilities are planned in the future across the country with upwards of $500 billion total being invested. 

Several “key initial technology partners” have also been mentioned, including Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), Arm Holdings (NASDAQ:ARM), and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), but few other details are given about where the project is headed. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, however, did discuss how AI could be used to analyze blood tests for the early detection of cancer.

Not everyone is convinced it will be successful. Notably, Elon Musk has expressed doubts about Stargate, saying they don’t have $100 billion to put in and only have $10 billion actually committed.

Whether or not that’s true remains to be seen. Previously SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son committed last month to investing $100 billion in the U.S. while OpenAI’s Sam Altman said Stargate “will be the most important project of this era.”.

Beyond the handful of technology partners identified, there seem to be a number of avenues for investors to pursue to profit from the venture. Below are two stocks that could be uniquely positioned to be top-tier winners from Stargate.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM)

While Arm and Nvidia will win lots of business, the former for its instruction sets for modern chips, and the latter for its AI accelerators, notably its most advanced and powerful Blackwell chips, both companies rely heavily upon Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE:TSM) for the actual chip production. The world’s largest pure play semiconductor foundry with a 60% market share was also an early investor in Arm’s 2023 initial public offering (as was Nvidia).

Taiwan Semiconductor’s business has been brisk due to AI chip demand. Fourth quarter revenue jumped 39% to $26.9 billion from the year-ago period, beating analyst expectations of $26.3 billion. The need for advanced chips drove greater adoption of its 3 nanometer process, lifting revenue from the business 26%, far more than the 15% growth it witnessed last year.

The foundry has expanded capacity to meet the burgeoning demand from chip companies. Higher capacity utilization helped push productivity forward and gross margins increased to 59%. With no let up in sight for industry demand and Stargate partners needing even more chips to build out the project, TSM stock is sure to be a winning investment.

Vistra (VST)

A project on the scale of Stargate is going to consume massive amounts of energy to operate. The cheapest source, and one gaining greater attention as more data centers are built, is the use of nuclear energy. That makes Vistra (NYSE:VST) a potential winner.

Vistra was already one of the largest electricity providers in Texas until its purchase of Energy Harbor last year catapulted it into becoming the country’s second-largest nuclear power generation provider. It operates the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant in Glen Rose, Texas. While it does not directly provide nuclear energy to the Abilene area where the Stargate data center is being built, it does contribute to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid that provides  most of Texas with electricity.

Vistra subsidiary TXU Energy supplies the Abilene region and draws from ERCOT. It offers residential and business customers options on their energy sources including natural gas and renewables.

Texas is the second-largest market for data centers and Vistra president and CEO Jim Burke told analysts last year, “We’re seeing customers approach us at a rate that we haven’t seen in my history with this industry.” While nuclear was of interest, they were also seeking out natural gas plants as well. 

Stargate becomes just another growth drivers that should see VST stock rise.

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