Musk Pans Trump’s $500bn AI Deal

Tesla chief and US President Donald Trump’s current close aide Elon Musk has taken to X this week to criticise OpenAI, and its $500-billion artificial intelligence project that Trump announced with great fanfare at the White House on Tuesday.

Sam Altman-led OpenAI is tying up with SoftBank and Oracle for a joint venture called The Stargate Project.

On Tuesday, Trump announced the JV will build data centres and create more than 100,000 jobs in the United States, as Altman, Oracle chairman Larry Ellison and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son joined him at the White House for the launch.

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A day later, as OpenAI posted about Stargate on X, Musk responded: “They don’t actually have the money.”

“SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority,” Musk said in another tweet. He since made several posts critical of the project, including a few on Friday.

Musk is a rival of Altman and is in an ongoing lawsuit with OpenAI. He alleges OpenAI put profits and commercial interests ahead of the public good.

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and left three years later. Since his exit, OpenAI has gone on to become the face of generative AI, while Musk started another rival startup, xAI, last year that was valued at $24 billion in May.

‘The end may be in sight’

Meanwhile, on Thursday, taking questions from reporters at the White House, Trump was asked if Musk’s criticism of the AI deal bothered him.

“It doesn’t. He hates one of the people in the deal,” Trump said of Musk. “People in the deal are very, very smart people. But, Elon, one of the people he happens to hate. I have certain hatreds of people, too.”

As for Musk’s claims about insufficient funding, Trump said: “I don’t know if they do, but you know, they’re putting up the money. The government’s not putting up anything, they’re putting up money. They’re very rich people, so I hope they do.”

A Trump adviser wondered whether the incident would lead to a split between Trump and Musk, who is leading Trump’s government efficiency project.

“The end may be in sight,” the adviser said.

Reuters, with additional editing by Vishakha Saxena

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Vishakha Saxena

Vishakha Saxena is the Multimedia and Social Media Editor at Asia Financial. She has worked as a digital journalist since 2013, and is an experienced writer and multimedia producer. As a trader and investor, she is keenly interested in new economy, emerging markets and the intersections of finance and society. You can write to her at [email protected]

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