Musk clashes with OpenAI’s Altman over $500 billion Stargate | News about Donald Trump
Elon Musk clashes with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about Stargate an artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure project touted by President Donald Trump, the latest in a feud between the two tech billionaires that began on OpenAI’s board and is now testing Musk’s influence over the new president.
On Tuesday, Trump discussed a joint venture that would invest up to $500 billion through a new partnership formed by OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, along with Oracle and SoftBank.
The new entity, Stargate, is already beginning to build the data centers and power generation needed to further develop the rapidly developing artificial intelligence technology.
Trump called it a “big vote of confidence in America’s potential” under his new administration, with an initial $100 billion private investment that could reach five times that amount.
But Musk, a close Trump adviser who helped fund his campaign and now leads the government’s cost-cutting initiative, questioned the value of the investment hours later.
“They don’t really have any money,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X. “SoftBank has well under $10 billion secured. I have it on good authority.”
Altman responded Wednesday, saying Musk was “wrong, as I’m sure you know,” and invited Musk to visit the first Texas site, which is already under construction.
“[T]his is great for the country. I understand that what is good for the country is not always optimal for your companies, but in your new role I hope that you will mainly put [America] first,” Altman wrote, using an American flag emoticon to represent America.
Behind the fight
The public standoff over Stargate is part of a years-long dispute between Musk and Altman that began with a backroom contest over who should lead OpenAI, which they both helped found.
Musk, an early OpenAI investor and board member, sued the artificial intelligence company last year, claiming it betrayed its core goals as a nonprofit research lab that serves the public good rather than pursuing profit.
Musk has since escalated the dispute, adding new claims and seeking a court order that would halt OpenAI’s plans to more fully transform itself into a for-profit business. A hearing is scheduled for early February in federal court in California.
The world’s richest man, whose companies include Tesla, SpaceX and X, last year founded his own rival AI company xAI, which is building its own massive data center in Memphis, Tennessee. Musk says he faces unfair competition from OpenAI and its close business partner Microsoft, which has provided the massive computing resources needed to build AI systems such as ChatGPT.
When did Stargate start?
Tech news outlet The Information first reported on the OpenAI data center project called Stargate in March 2024, indicating that it was in the works long before Trump announced it.
Another company – Crusoe Energy Systems – announced in July that it is building a large and “custom-designed AI data center” outside Abilene, Texas, at a site operated by energy technology company Lancium. Crusoe and Lancium said in a joint statement at the time that the project was “backed by a multibillion-dollar investment,” but did not disclose who the backer was.
The artificial intelligence technology requires huge amounts of electricity to build and operate, and both companies said the project would be powered by renewable sources like nearby solar farms in a way that would, according to Lancium CEO Michael McNamara, “deliver the maximum amount of green energy per at the lowest possible price,” Crusoe said he would own and develop the facility.
It is not clear how or when that project became the first phase of the Stargate investment revealed by Trump. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison said Tuesday that the Abilene project is the first of about 10 data center buildings currently under construction, and that number could increase to 20.
Where is Microsoft?
Absent from Trump’s press conference on Tuesday was Microsoft, which has long supported OpenAI with billions of dollars in investment and allows its data centers to be used to build the models behind ChatGPT and other generative AI tools.
Microsoft said this week that it is also investing in the Stargate project, but released a statement saying that its partnership with OpenAI will “evolve” in a way that will allow OpenAI to “build additional capacity, primarily for research and training model”.
Asked about Musk’s comments on the Stargate deal Wednesday during an interview with CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella turned to his company’s own $80 billion plan to build out its global AI infrastructure, of which 50 billion dollars in the US.
“Look, all I know is that I’m good for my $80 billion,” Nadella said, laughing.
