Elon Musk and Sam Altman are fighting — and fighting publicly. Reason: ‘Stargate’, the $500 billion joint venture that aims to build data centers and other AI infrastructure in the US. SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX are the initial equity funders. Arm Holdings, Microsoft, Nvidia are technology partners. The Stargate project calls for $100 billion in initial investment and plans for up to $500 billion over the next four years to build AI infrastructure.Following the announcement, which featured US President Donald Trump alongside SoftBank‘s Masayoshi Son and Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Elon Musk questioned the feasibility of the financial commitments.
In a long post on Twitter, OpenAI announced the project. Responding to the post, Elon Musk wrote that the necessary capital isn’t available. “They don’t actually have the money,” Musk said in a post. “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority,” Tesla CEO added further.
This directly contradicted the stated plan to deploy $100 billion immediately and ultimately reach $500 billion for data centers and campuses. Sam Altman disputed Musk’s claim that SoftBank has under $10 billion. “i genuinely respect your accomplishments and think you are the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time,” wrote Sam Altman.
Responding to the post on Softbank, Sam Altman wrote, “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.” He added the post with an emoji of the American flag.
This is not the first time that Elon Musk and Sam Altman are squabbling. Elon Musk’s recent criticism of Sam Altman and the Stargate AI project is part of a longer-standing pattern of conflict between the two. Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI nearly a decade ago as a non-profit organization. However, Musk departed OpenAI in 2018 and subsequently founded his own AI company, xAI, in 2023.
Since then, Musk has repeatedly criticized Altman, both publicly and through legal channels, alleging that OpenAI violated its original non-profit charter by accepting billions of dollars in investment from Microsoft beginning in 2019. He claims this move betrayed the organization’s initial purpose. Sam Altman-led OpenAI on its part has disputed Elon Musk’s claims. In a long post on X recently, it said how Elon Musk is lying and he himself wanted to make OpenAI a profitable company when he was its part.
