Major technology titans on Wednesday lashed out at their rivals over Donald Trump's promise of huge investments in AI announced the day before.
President Trump on Tuesday announced Stargate, a $500 billion project jointly funded by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank. During the announcement, the president was flanked by leaders from both companies: Sam Altman, Larry Ellison, and Masayoshi Son. Son will serve as the project's chairman. All three are billionaires. A representative from Abu Dhabi's state-run AI fund MGX, another major investor, was absent from the photo shoot.
The partnership aims to build data centers and computing infrastructure essential for the development of artificial intelligence. Although the primary investment amount is large, there are already estimates that developing AI will cost that much.
Another notable absence was Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and xAI. the richest person in the world. He is a Trump ally and reportedly has an office in the White House. The night after the announcement, he declared Stargate a financial farce.
When OpenAI wrote on X (Musk's social network) that it would “start immediately deploying $100 billion,” Musk responded, “They actually don't have the funds,” and followed up with yet another jab. I uploaded it. “SoftBank has secured funding of well under $10 billion. I have it on good authority.”
Musk, who has a net worth of approximately $430 billion, tweets extremely frequently on a daily basis about an eye-popping array of topics. Usually they promote their companies or Trump. Despite his posting tendencies, his tweets denouncing Stargate are nothing more than hot air and represent an unusual break with the White House, one of President Trump's closest allies and top advisers.
President Trump has yet to respond to Musk's aides. On his own social network, Truth Social, the president was focused on celebrating his wife Melania's anniversary.
Mr. Musk continued. He retweeted an image of a crack pipe with the tweet: “Image of the research tool used by OpenAI to arrive at Stargate's $500 billion figure has been leaked.” He spent most of Wednesday afternoon sniping at the Stargate.
Mr. Altman tried to strike a conciliatory tone in his initial response, saying, “I truly respect your work and think you are the most inspirational entrepreneur of our time.”
Then, at least one glove came off when Altman wrote cynically about Musk's SoftBank comments: Why not visit the first site already in progress? This is great for the country. We understand that what's great for the country isn't necessarily what's best for your company, but we want you to put 🇺🇸 first in your new role. ”
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, A less belligerent public figure than Altman and certainly more belligerent than Musk, he was asked about the altercation in an interview with CNBC. he quipped: “All I know is that I'm OK with having $80 billion. We're going to spend $80 billion building Azure,” he said, referring to Microsoft's cloud computing products.
After newsletter promotion
Unlike Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman, Mr. Nadella did not sit on the stage next to Mr. Trump at Monday's inauguration, but his company donated $1 million to the inaugural committee. Mr. Nadella's net worth is estimated to be more than $1 billion, due to stock compensation from his employer and recent impressive achievements.
Part of this animosity stems from the longstanding feud between Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman. Musk co-founded OpenAI with Altman in 2015, but later parted ways with Altman. In March 2024, Musk sued the company over its plans to transition to a for-profit business model, dropped the lawsuit in July, and sued again in August alleging “deceptive Shakespearean metaphors.”
The other two heads of companies involved in Stargate, Mr. Ellison and Mr. Song, have not yet commented.
