Elon Musk is casting doubt on President Trump's first major technology investment announcement, openly questioning the administration he now serves.
On Tuesday, Trump announced a joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle to create at least $100 billion in computing infrastructure to power artificial intelligence, some of which is already underway.
But in two late-night messages on x, Musk said the company, called Stargate, did not have the financing to reach promised investment levels.
“They don't have the money,” Musk wrote in response to an OpenAI post about the announcement. “SoftBank has much less than $10 billion insured. I have it on good authority.”
The firing of Musk, one of Trump's closest advisers who will head an agency created to cut the nation's budget, is one of his first public breaks with the administration. It is also an unusual measure for any senior political official to question an initiative trumpeted by the president.
Trump claimed the ai announcement as an early trophy, taking credit for companies' decision to spend up to $500 billion building data centers, which are huge buildings filled with servers that provide computing power. Trump promised to remove regulatory obstacles to the development of ai and make the United States a world leader in that technology, overtaking China.
“The American people should accept the words of President Trump and those CEOs,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Wednesday. “These investments are coming to our great country, and American jobs are coming with them.”
Stargate already has $100 billion on its hands, two people familiar with the company said. SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX, a United Arab Emirates investment group focused on ai, provided the funding.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement of news content related to ai systems. The two companies have denied the lawsuit's claims.)
Musk has been feuding with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Musk, who helped found the company, sued OpenAI and Altman for antitrust violations.
Musk formed a rival called xAI in 2023, long after a boom in the technology that included the debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT. The startup recently raised $6 billion in funding.
Altman took to x on Wednesday morning to refute Musk's claims.
“Wrong, as you surely know,” Altman wrote. “Do you want to come visit the first site that is already up and running?”
Musk and Trump have grown closer in recent months after the tech mogul supported the president's campaign and ultimately donated more than $250 million to support his campaign. Musk, the richest man in the world according to Bloomberg Billionaires IndexHe became a strong supporter and used his social media company x's megaphone to defend Trump.
Musk is also the CEO of Tesla and rocket company SpaceX.
“Elon Musk is a walking conflict of interest,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. “Throughout history, people have tried to influence the government, but what makes him so unique is his close friendship with Donald Trump, along with the breadth of his businesses that are affected by government contracts, taxes and other public policies”.
Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During the presidential transition, Musk settled into a cabin at Mar-a-Lago with easy access to planning meetings. He has been ubiquitous at Trump's side, taking him to a SpaceX rocket launch, attending Trump's New Year's Eve party and sitting with other tech moguls at the inauguration on Monday.
On Wednesday, Musk reposted a comment from a technology investor that repeated claims that the Stargate initiative was underfunded. The post by Gavin Baker, managing partner and chief investment officer at Atreides Management, said that “Stargate is a big name, but $500 billion is a ridiculous number and no one should take it seriously,” unless Softbank was willing to sell certain assets. .
