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.”
Musk, who has a net worth of some $430bn, tweets extremely often every day about an eye-watering swath of topics – usually hyping up his own companies, and Trump. Even with his propensity to post, his tweets pronouncing Stargate nothing more than hot air represent an extraordinary break with the White House, where he is one of Trump’s closest and most senior advisers.
Trump has yet to respond to Musk’s broadside. On Truth Social, the president’s own social network, he was focused on wishing a happy anniversary to his wife, Melania.
Musk went further. He retweeted an image of a crack pipe with the accompanying tweet: “Leaked image of the research tool OpenAI used to come up with their $500 billion number for Stargate.” He spent much of Wednesday afternoon sniping at Stargate.
Altman tried to strike a conciliatory tone with his first response: “I genuinely respect your accomplishments and think you are the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time.”
Then at least one glove came off when Altman wrote snidely about Musk’s Softbank remark: “Wrong, as you surely know. want to come visit the first site already under way? this is great for the country. I realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies, but in your new role I hope you’ll mostly put 🇺🇸 first.”
The Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, a less pugnacious public figure than Altman, and certainly than Musk, was asked about the spat during an interview on CNBC. He quipped: “All I know is, I’m good for my $80bn. I’m going to spend $80bn building out Azure,” referring to Microsoft’s cloud-computing product.
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Unlike Musk and Altman, Nadella did not sit on a dais beside Trump during the president’s inauguration on Monday, though his company did give $1m to the inaugural committee. Nadella’s net worth is estimated to be more than $1bn due to stock awards from his employer and its recent stellar performance.
The animosity in part stems from a longstanding feud between Musk and Altman. Musk co-founded OpenAI with Altman in 2015 but later split from the younger man. In March 2024, Musk sued the company over its plan to transition to a for-profit business model, then withdrew the suit in July, then sued again in August, alleging “deceit of Shakespearean proportions”.
The other two company heads involved in Stargate, Ellison and Son, have yet to comment.
