Tech titans bicker over $500bn AI investment announced by Trump
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After unveiling of Stargate, Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Satya Nadella of Tesla, OpenAI and Microsoft trade barbs. Major tech moguls had their claws out for each other on Wednesday, hissing at their rivals over enormous pledges to invest in AI that had been announced by Donald Trump the day before.
Trump announced Stargate, a $500bn project to be funded jointly by OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, on Tuesday. During the announcement, the president was flanked by the leaders of those companies: Sam Altman, Larry Ellison and Masayoshi Son, respectively. Son is slated to be the chair of the project. All three are multibillionaires. Absent from the photo op was a representative from MGX, Abu Dhabi’s state AI fund, another principal investor.
The partnership is geared towards building essential data centers and computing infrastructure for the development of artificial intelligence. While the headline investment is substantial, some estimates had already indicated that developing AI would cost that much.
Another notable absence was Elon Musk – the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and xAI; the richest person in the world; and a Trump ally – who reportedly has an office in the White House. The evening after the announcement, he declared Stargate a financial farce.
When OpenAI wrote on X – Musk’s social network – that it would “begin deploying $100bn immediately”, Musk responded: “They don’t actually have the money” and followed up with another jab: “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.”.
