As Trump crows about billion-dollar A.I. deal, Musk undercuts announcement
- by MSNBC
- Jan 22, 2025
- 0 Comments
- 0 Likes Flag 0 Of 5
By Ja'han Jones
President Donald Trump hosted an event Tuesday with wealthy tech CEOs to tout what he portrayed as one of the biggest accomplishments of his presidency thus far: a $500 billion investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure. But it didnât take long for his biggest benefactor, Elon Musk, to throw dirt all over it.Â
Trumpâs press event with Sam Altman of OpenAI, Larry Ellison of Oracle and Masayoshi Son of Softbank was to announce what Trump said could be âsomething that could be the biggest of allâ (specifically, data centers to power A.I. tools). Trump held a similar press conference with Son in 2016 to announce large investments in the U.S., and the results of those investments were pretty mixed.Â
Itâs unclear whether Trump was announcing a wholly novel investment or just providing new details on a plan that was already in place. Last March, the tech news platform The Information reported on a $100 billion, multiyear data center project involving OpenAI and Microsoft. Nonetheless, Tuesdayâs event was clearly meant to deliver an early win of sorts to Trump. The CEOs repeatedly credited Trump for the multibillion-dollar deal.
But Musk wasnât having it.Â
âThey donât actually have the money,â he claimed in a post on X in response to OpenAIâs announcement of the so-called Stargate Project. Musk followed that up with a claim that âSoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.â
Musk provided no evidence for this assertion, and given his own ambitions of developing AI tools and ongoing legal feud with OpenAI, thereâs plenty of reasons to be skeptical. A source familiar with the project also told CNBC that âthereâs no doubtâ that Muskâs grudge against Altman inspired the posts. (Neither OpenAI nor Oracle immediately responded to CNBC requests for comment, and Softbank declined to comment.)
Altman, for his part, later responded to Musk by defending the projectâs merits, posting: âthis is great for the country. i realize what is great for the country isnât always whatâs optimal for your companies, but in your new role i hope youâll mostly put [America] first."
The OpenAI CEO topped off his remarks with some rather effusive praise, posting, âI genuinely respect your accomplishments and think you are the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time.â
Trump has yet to weigh in on Muskâs allegation, but it seems likely that having his best-known, attention-hungry supporter undercut the details behind the deal would take the shine off the announcement.
Please first to comment
Related Post
Stay Connected
Tweets by elonmuskTo get the latest tweets please make sure you are logged in on X on this browser.
Sponsored
Popular Post
tesla Model 3 Owner Nearly Stung With $1,700 Bill For Windshield Crack After Delivery
33 ViewsDec 28 ,2024
Middle-Aged Dentist Bought a Tesla Cybertruck, Now He Gets All the Attention He Wanted
32 ViewsNov 23 ,2024