The Oracle Trap: How OpenAI's Spending Could Bring Down a Giant

In a recent monologue on Better Offline, host Ed Zitron laid out a startling mathematical case: Oracle, one of the world's oldest and largest enterprise software companies, may be building itself into a corner so deep that if OpenAI fails to grow revenue by 10 to 15 times in the next few years, Oracle itself could run out of money and "probably shut down." The claim sounds absurd on its face—Oracle has been a corporate titan for decades—but Zitron walks through the numbers methodically, drawing on sources familiar with the Stargate Abilene data center project and public financial filings.

The Scale of Stargate

Oracle is building roughly 7.1 gigawatts of data center capacity for OpenAI, with most of it scheduled for completion between late 2028 and 2030—if it ever gets built. The only project anywhere near completion is Stargate Abilene, which began construction in mid-2024. Two years in, it has two buildings finished and about 200 megawatts of capacity out of a planned eight buildings. Reports from the last two years suggested Abilene would be fully energized between end of 2025 and mid-2026, but sources on the ground now say they don't expect completion before April 2027. Building 3 has been handed over but "barely has any gear in it," meaning it will be months before it generates revenue.