What Trump’s Sovereign Wealth Fund Could Mean for Tech

President Trump, center, signs an executive action to create a sovereign wealth fund for the U.S. Photo by Getty

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The U.S. should start a sovereign wealth fund and maybe it should invest in TikTok, President Trump suggested earlier this week. Well, maybe. But if the fund ever does come to life, its money would be arguably better spent on a bigger, more speculative investment: Stargate, the $500 billion OpenAI-SoftBank-Oracle data center expansion that Trump announced last month.

Plans for both the sovereign wealth fund and Stargate are hazy and easy to dismiss, particularly in a dizzying two weeks of White House orders and other chaos. But tying the two initiatives together could work. The buildout of data centers for artificial intelligence has clear national importance, but will be difficult to finance using only free-market dollars.