A high-profile joint venture announced under the banner of the 'Stargate' Project would unite major AI players — OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, Microsoft, Arm and others — in a sweeping infrastructure collaboration, and a Yale legal expert warned the deal could violate antitrust law dating back 135 years. The consortium’s stated goals include massive AI infrastructure buildouts and cross-industry data-sharing for applications in health care and research. The unusual cooperation of direct competitors has prompted immediate scrutiny from lawyers and policy experts about market concentration and the implications for competition in AI platforms and services. University research partners and hospital systems watching the project have raised questions about data governance, access for academic researchers and whether the deal would erect new barriers to entry for smaller labs. Antitrust concerns center on whether such a JV would combine dominant players’ infrastructure and datasets in ways that hinder rival models or lock universities into a small set of commercial providers. Legal scholars say regulators will likely evaluate both vertical and horizontal effects on innovation.