Elon Musk Goes To War With Sam Altman, Directly Contradicts Trump Who Endorsed Stargate AI Contract- wna24

Washington: Elon Musk, the Billionaire entrepreneur and close aide of Donald Trump, is said to be fuming with the Stargate AI infrastructure project involving $500 Billion investment comprising of OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle. Reportedly, Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who were earlier close aides and had planned to ramp up United States’ AI infrastructure by setting up data centres back in 2015, have now become arch rivals.

The Stargate AI project, touted by Trump, is a joint venture investing up to $500 Billion through a new partnership formed by OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT, SoftBank and Oracle.

The new entity, Stargate, will start building out data centres and the electricity generation needed for the further development of the fast evolving AI in Texas, according to the White House. According to Trump, this move will likely generate 1,00,000 jobs while many of them being temporary. 

Elon Musk who put billions of dollars to fund Trump’s election campaign and since then has been one of his close aides may have been thinking to take the advantage to boost his own xAI operation but his (Trump’s) government latest move with just two days in power may come as a setback for the technocrat.

Trump declared Stargate project saying it “a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential” under his new administration, with an initial private investment of $100 billion that could reach five times that sum.”

A frustrated Elon Musk said that the investors don’t actually have the money adding SoftBank has well under $10 Billion secured. I have that on good authority.

To Musk’s funding remark, Altman took to X and wrote, “Wrong, as you surely know,” adding “Want to come visit the first site already under way? This is great for the country. I realise 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 American first.”

The public clash over Stargate is part of a years-long dispute between Musk and Altman that began with a boardroom rivalry over who should run OpenAI, which both men helped found.

Musk, an early OpenAI investor and board member, sued the artificial intelligence company last year alleging it had betrayed its founding aims as a nonprofit research lab benefiting the public good rather than pursuing profits.

Musk has since escalated the dispute, adding new claims and asking for a court order that would stop OpenAI plans to convert itself into a for-profit business more fully. A hearing is set for early February in a California federal court.

The world’s richest man, whose companies include Tesla, SpaceX and X, last year started his own rival AI company, xAI, that is building its own big data center in Memphis, Tennessee. Musk says it faces unfair competition from OpenAI and its close business partner Microsoft, which has supplied the huge computing resources needed to build AI systems such as ChatGPT.

Tech news outlet The Information first reported on an OpenAI data center project called Stargate in March 2024, indicating that it’s been in the works long before Trump announced it.

Another company — Crusoe Energy Systems — announced in July it was building a large and “specially designed AI data center” outside Abilene, Texas at a site run by energy technology company Lancium. Crusoe and Lancium said in a joint statement at the time that the project was “supported by a multibillion-dollar investment” but didn’t disclose its backers.

Both companies also said the energy-hungry project would be powered with renewable sources of electricity such as nearby solar farms, in a way that Lancium CEO Michael McNamara said would “deliver the maximum amount of green energy at the lowest possible cost.” Crusoe said it would own and develop the facility.

It’s not clear how and when that project became the first phase of the Stargate investment revealed by Trump. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison said Tuesday that the Abilene project is the first of about 10 data center buildings currently being built and that number could expand to 20.

Missing from Trump’s press conference Tuesday was Microsoft, which has long supported OpenAI with billions of dollars in investments and enabling its data centers to be used to build the models behind ChatGPT and other generative AI tools.

Microsoft said this week it is also investing in the Stargate project but put out a statement noting that its OpenAI partnership will “evolve” in a way that enables OpenAI “to build additional capacity, primarily for research and training of models.”

Asked about Musk’s comments about the Stargate deal Wednesday during a CNBC interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella pivoted to his company’s own $80 billion plan to build out its global AI infrastructure, of which $50 billion is being spent in the U.S.

“Look, all I know is, I’m good for my $80 billion,” said Nadella, laughing.