Elon Musk trashes Trump’s $500 billion AI plan immediately after president’s boastful press conference
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Musk publicly broke from the Trump administration’s latest initiative on artificial intelligence. Elon Musk, the billionaire tech CEO turned government adviser for President Donald Trump, openly questioned a new artificial intelligence initiative hours after the president announced it.
Musk claimed on Tuesday that the new AI initiative, called Stargate, did not have the funding necessary to fulfill its goal of investing $500 billion in building AI infrastructure in the United States over the next four years. The quick rebuke from Musk was noteworthy given his presence in the Trump world. Musk has been a vocal backer of the president and made his presence known throughout Trump’s inauguration.
The initiative is a collaboration between OpenAI, an AI research company that Musk co-founded before a falling out with Sam Altman, SoftBank and Oracle. In their announcement, the companies said they would immediately deploy $100 billion toward the initiative. They hope to build data centers across the U.S. – warehouses filled with powerful servers that provide computing power to develop and advance AI.
Musk has become one of Trump’s closest advisers over the last year. He has been entrusted to oversee the Department of Government Efficiency, the advisory board tasked to cut federal spending, and has been part of Trump’s transition process. The split is particularly eye-catching given Trump has a long history of valuing loyalty among his team. There are hardly any members of Trump’s first administration who have been brought back for his second term because of prior conflicts.
