Elon Musk is already casting doubt on OpenAI’s new, up to $500 billion investment deal with SoftBank (SFTBY+4.57%) and Oracle (ORCL+7.18%), despite backing from his allies — including President Donald Trump.
The companies are teaming up for what they call the “Stargate Project,” presumably named after the sci-fi franchise, which aims to spend $500 billion over the next four years building artificial intelligence infrastructure in the U.S. The companies said Tuesday that they would begin deploying $100 billion “immediately,” which will “generate massive economic benefit for the entire world.”
As the deal was announced Tuesday in the White House, Trump — standing alongside Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son — said the group would create a “new American company” that would generate more than 100,000 U.S. jobs. Ellison said the group’s first project, a one-million-square-foot data project, is already underway in Texas.
There’s just one problem with Stargate, according to Musk, an OpenAI co-founder who has since sued to block it and Altman’s plans: They don’t have the cash.
“They don’t actually have the money,” the Tesla (TSLA-0.55%) CEO and close Trump ally said shortly before midnight on Tuesday, in a post on his social media site X. “SoftBank has well under $10 [billion] secured. I have that on good authority,” Musk added just before 1 a.m. ET.
His comments marked a rare split between the world’s richest man and Trump, who took office on Monday. Musk was one of Trump’s biggest financial backers during the 2024 presidential campaign and has been given his own task force, nicknamed DOGE, and staff. The Trump administration is already facing at least four lawsuits over DOGE.
Musk’s remarks also show that, despite Altman and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ comments last month, Musk isn’t content to sit by as his rivals profit from the new Trump administration. Altman said in December that he believes “pretty strongly that Elon would do the right thing and that it would be profoundly un-American to use political power” against business rivals.
Besides Musk’s long-standing feud with Altman and litigation, he also founded an AI startup, xAI, to compete with OpenAI and other firms. xAI last month raised $6 billion at a $50 billion valuation, less than two years after he founded the company. That cash is expected to help xAI expand its Colossus supercomputer in Memphis, which it developed with Nvidia (NVDA+2.88%) chips.
xAI also works closely with Musk’s X. His social media platform, formerly Twitter, employs Grok, a chatbot developed by his xAI startup. Ellison is an investor in X, formerly served on Tesla’s board, and the pair of billionaires have a longtime friendship.
Stargate will be chaired by Son, whose SoftBank will have financial responsibility for the company, while OpenAI handles the operations. Those companies, along with Oracle and MGX, are the initial equity backers. SoftBank-backed Arm, Microsoft (MSFT-0.04%), and Nvidia will work with Oracle and OpenAI on the technology.
“All of us look forward to continuing to build and develop AI—and in particular AGI—for the benefit of all of humanity,” OpenAI said in a statement. “We believe that this new step is critical on the path, and will enable creative people to figure out how to use AI to elevate humanity.”
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