Elon Musk pours cold water over Trump’s $500bn ‘Stargate’ plan with cheeky jab

Elon Musk has poured cold water on Donald Trump‘s half-a-trillion-dollar Artificial Intelligence initiative – marking a potential first rift between the pair since Trump took office.

The President declared on Tuesday that several tech giants including Oracle, MGX and OpenAI would be pledging $500billion (£406billion) to fund the construction of data centres in the US over his four-year term.

He said that the project, called Stargate, would be “the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history”, adding: “It’s big money and high-quality people.”

Trump said the mega funding drive would be “a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential”, but now, tech tycoon Musk – himself a major player in AI – has warned that the investment may not be all it seems.

An OpenAI press release had talked up its funding for Stargate, including an initial investment of $100billion.

But Musk prodded: “They don’t actually have the money.”

And in a swipe at Japanese partner investors SoftBank, he said he “has it on good authority” that the firm “has well under $10B secured”.

Musk has endured a long-standing feud with Sam Altman, with whom he jointly founded OpenAI, the firm behind Artificial Intelligence behemoth ChatGPT.

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Musk, who resigned from OpenAI in 2018, has since labelled his former colleague Altman “Swindly Sam”.

Meanwhile, Altman has called Musk a “bully” in response.

In the face of the X owner’s condemnation, construction on one of Stargate data centres has already begun in Texas, according to Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, who launched the project in the White House to alongside Trump, Altman and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son.

“We wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr President,” Altman said.

Though Musk and Trump appear to be at loggerheads over AI, the Tesla owner has been vocal in his support for the President on cracking down on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Reacting to the news that Trump had signed an executive order repealing Lyndon Johnson’s establishment of affirmative action, Musk said simply: “Massive”.

Musk, who now leads the new administration’s drive to cut costs across the federal government, took a swipe at DEI initiatives on social media in a reply to the news of Coast Guard chief Linda Fagan’s termination.

“Undermining the US military and border security to spend money on racist/sexist DEI nonsense is no longer acceptable,” Musk said.