Tech CEOs battle over Trump’s Stargate AI project

Big names in the tech world, from Elon Musk and Sam Altman to Satya Nadella and Marc Benioff, clash after President Donald Trump announced a $500 billion private AI investment project. are.

Mr. Musk hasn’t stopped his war of words yet. tesla The CEO is trying to tear Altman against Mr. X over OpenAI’s partnership with Axios and Altman’s previous support for venture capitalist Reid Hoffman’s past efforts against Trump. .

Altman, who joined President Trump on stage to announce his push for artificial intelligence, said Thursday morning, without directly tagging Musk, “One more mean tweet and I’ll make you like me.” I might be able to do it,” he posted.

Earlier this week, President Trump announced a joint venture with OpenAI called Stargate. oracle and Softbank Investing billions of dollars to increase domestic computing capacity to accelerate AI development in the United States.

Management has pledged to invest an initial $100 billion and up to $500 billion over the next four years.

But Musk, a close ally of Trump and a key figure in the AI ​​field for his startup xAI, said in a post on his social media platform He claimed that there was “actually no funding” to provide it. investment.

“SoftBank has secured well under $10 billion. I have it on good authority,” Musk added in a later post. Altman responded to Musk’s claims Wednesday by saying, “As you all know, that’s not true.”

The Stargate project was announced at the White House on Tuesday by President Trump, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. Son will become chairman of semiconductor company Stargate. arm, microsoft, NvidiaOracle and OpenAI will serve as key early technology partners.

Musk chairs the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the White House’s main government efficiency effort. He has been President Trump’s biggest financial backer so far in the 2024 election.

on wednesday, sales force CEO Marc Benioff suggested the investment plan could cause tension between close partners OpenAI and Microsoft.

OpenAI announced Tuesday that it has terminated its agreement with Microsoft to serve as its exclusive cloud provider. This change in relationships was revealed as part of the Stargate Project announcement.

“Microsoft is building its own AI, so I think it’s really important that OpenAI adapts quickly to other platforms,” ​​Benioff told CNBC. “I don’t think Microsoft will use OpenAI in the future. They will have their own frontier model.”

“They made it clear that it was too expensive, too difficult, and that they wanted to have their own,” the Salesforce chief added. “That’s why they hired Mustafa Suleiman[as Microsoft AI CEO]- and Mustafa Suleiman and Sam Altman are not best friends.”

Microsoft named Suleiman a co-founder last year. Google AI lab DeepMind leads new AI division.

Microsoft is the single largest investor in OpenAI, pumping billions of dollars into the company. We are also offering OpenAI models on the Azure cloud platform as part of a commercial agreement between the two companies.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Wednesday addressed concerns surrounding the tech giant’s relationship with OpenAI, saying the two companies continue to share a “significant partnership.”

“Sam (Altman) wants to continue the scaling method of building more compute to train more models,” Nadella told CNBC. “We have a right of first refusal. He comes to us first. If we meet those needs, we clear it. If not, he comes to us first. can go to these other providers.”

When asked about Musk’s claim that OpenAI and other companies involved in Stargate don’t have the funds to make up for the $100 billion initial commitment, Nadella said, “Look, all I know is that the $80 billion It just means that the dollar is fine.”

Microsoft announced in early 2025 that it plans to spend $80 billion this year building data centers to ramp up its AI efforts.

“I’m going to spend $80 billion building Azure,” Nadella told CNBC. “Customers can trust Microsoft.”

—CNBC’s Eamon Javers and Kevin Breuninger contributed to this report.