Stargate Project will take on cancer vaccines

The technology news has been coming fast and furious from the White House as the CEOs of some of the biggest tech companies in the world become more visibly entrenched in the policymaking process than ever before. 

Among the major announcements from the first weeks of new administration was the official launch of the Stargate initiative, a private partnership that really began in 2024 but is being coopted by the White House with enthusiastic participation by the leaders of OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX – all of whom plan to invest up to $500 billion in new AI data centers and capabilities over the coming years. 

Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, and OpenAI will also serve as initial technology partners. 

The companies will start by building a new bank of data centers in Texas, which are already under construction, with the aim of powering leading edge AI capabilities to counter up-and-coming contenders like China’s DeepSeek model. 

With more robust infrastructure for processing data and training new AI models, the companies hope to tackle some of the world’s biggest problems, including finding better cures for cancer. 

“[Stargate] will be the most important project of this era. We will see diseases get cured at an unprecedented rate. We will be amazed at how quickly we’re curing this cancer and that one,” said OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman. 

Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, expanded on the sentiment. 

“One of the most exciting things using the tools that [OpenAI and Softbank] are providing is a cancer vaccine,” said Ellison during a press conference.  Oracle is now the owner of Cerner, its digital connections to the healthcare industry, and its vast trove of electronic health data, which may support the research. “All of our cancer tumors – little fragments of those tumors float around in your blood. So you can do early cancer detection with a blood test. And using AI, to look at the blood test, you can find the cancers that are seriously threatening the person.”   

“Beyond that, once we gene sequence that cancer or tumor, you can then vaccinate the person – design a vaccine for every individual person to vaccinate them against that cancer,” Ellison continued. “And you can make that vaccine – that mRNA vaccine – you can make that robotically using AI in about 48 hours. So imagine early cancer detection, the development of a cancer vaccine for your particular cancer aimed at you, and have that vaccine available in 48 hours. This is the promise of AI and the promise of the future.” 

While it’s not clear whether cancer research will be a first priority for Stargate or if it’s simply somewhere on the list of potential projects, there’s no question that there is a promising opportunity to leverage AI technologies as part of the ongoing search for more personalized, effective cancer treatments. 

Life science companies and healthcare providers have already begun the quest to infuse AI into their drug development and research processes – and full participation from these stakeholders will be crucial for the success of any industry coalition that hopes to take on the challenge, wrote Sorena Nadaf-Rahrov, MS, MMI, PhDc, President and Chief Strategy & AI Innovation Officer at the Cancer Center Informatics Society (CCIS), in an op-ed published in The Cancer Letter. 

“Without the direct involvement and insights of cancer centers, this initiative would risk becoming yet another IBM Watson Oncology—a promising technology that ultimately fell short of its potential due to misalignment with the practical needs and expertise of healthcare professionals,” cautioned Nadaf-Rahrov. 

“…[N]ow is the time to strengthen collaborations between cancer centers, biotech companies, pharma, and private funding streams. These partnerships have been shown to be critical to elevating translational research to new heights, ensuring that groundbreaking discoveries are effectively applied to improve patient outcomes.” 

Cross-industry collaboration won’t just be essential for the domain-specific knowledge that providers and biotech companies can bring to the table. It’s also critical to ensure that future oncology-focused AI tools will be developed in an equitable and ethical manner – words and concepts that the new administration is already ruthlessly scrubbing from every piece of scientific literature it can get its hands on.  

Nonetheless, “transparency, accountability, and fairness are critical principles guiding AI applications,” maintained Nadaf-Rahrov. “Ethical frameworks must address challenges such as bias in AI models, data privacy, and the potential misuse of AI technologies. Interdisciplinary collaboration among technologists, clinicians, and ethicists is essential to navigate these challenges and responsibly maximize the benefits of AI. Achieving this requires full alignment with cancer centers worldwide.” 

With some of the most advanced AI companies on board with the project, there certainly is the potential for bigger, faster breakthroughs in precision medicine. However, these companies will need to learn to work with a wide array of healthcare entities while avoiding the historical pitfalls faced by tech companies trying to make it big in the incredibly complex healthcare sector. 

Hopefully, Stargate’s members will find the right strategy to make real progress that can be equitably integrated into clinical care, and will work appropriately with partners to produce measurable results in the fight against cancer.  

Jennifer Bresnick is a journalist and freelance content creator with a decade of experience in the health IT industry.  Her work has focused on leveraging innovative technology tools to create value, improve health equity, and achieve the promises of the learning health system.  She can be reached at [email protected].