Elon Musk and Sam Altman spar over Trump’s Stargate AI investment announcement

A war of words between Elon Musk and Sam Altman escalated on social media Thursday, as two of the most powerful men in tech sparred over their rival artificial intelligence initiatives. 

The latest exchange began after OpenAI, where Altman is CEO, was revealed as a key player in Stargate, the AI infrastructure project President Donald Trump announced this week that is coming with a massive investment push.

“They donâ€t actually have the money,â€� Musk wrote in a long post on his social platform, X, about the new venture. It was not immediately clear whom Musk was initially referring to, but he soon followed up, naming SoftBank, Stargateâ€s main financial backer.

“SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority,â€� he said, without elaborating. Neither Musk nor his electronic car company Tesla have publicized any formal links.   

Altman responded praising Musk — “I genuinely respect your accomplishments and think you are the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time,â€� he wrote on X — but he called his SoftBank claim wrong. 

“I realize what is great for the country isnâ€t always whatâ€s optimal for your companies, but in your new role i hope youâ€ll mostly put [America] first,â€� he added, using an American flag emoji.

In remarks to reporters Thursday, Trump weighed in on the dispute but gave no indication that Altman’s or OpenAI’s status on the project were threatened.

Without mentioning Altman by name, Trump mentioned Musk while referring to ‘one of the people he happens to hate.’

‘But I have certain hatreds of people, too,’ he said.

The spat has its roots in a pending lawsuit filed by Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI, over control of the company; it was rekindled after Trumpâ€s announcement this week that OpenAI would be part of the $500 billion Stargate initiative designed to make the United States a world leader in AI.

Late Wednesday and into Thursday, Musk continued to hammer Altman, repeatedly citing posts during Trumpâ€s 2016 presidential run in which Altman appeared to denounce Trump. 

By 8:30 p.m., Altman posted that heâ€d recently had a change of heart about the president: “watching @potus more carefully recently has really changed my perspective on him (i wish i had done more of my own thinkingâ€� he said in part. “iâ€m not going to agree with him on everything, but i think he will be incredible for the country in many ways!â€�

On Thursday morning, Altman posted, responding to Musk: “just one more mean tweet and then maybe youâ€ll love yourself…â€�

The tit-for-tat between Musk and Altman is a sign of both the struggle within the tech community to curry favor with Trump and how the AI race is driving the push for tech dominance. If putting out new, consumer-friendly devices was once the way for a tech company to gain power, the struggle to create the most advanced form of AI has almost completely taken over.   

The situation also points to the tension of Muskâ€s role as both a top Trump adviser and one of the worldâ€s most powerful — and combative — business moguls. Musk has his own interest in AI through the X, which debuted Grok, its rival to OpenAIâ€s ChatGPT, in November.

The simmering Altman-Musk feud goes back years, well before Muskâ€s emergence in the U.S. political scene and even before the recent explosion of artificial intelligence technology. Companies have rushed to invest in AI infrastructure and development, so much so that it has accounted for a significant part of recent U.S. economic growth. A Goldman Sachs paper published in June, well before the announcement of the Stargate project, projected that AI capital expenditure could top $1 trillion.

OpenAI had generally been considered the leader in AI development, though it faces major competition from other startups, as well as most major tech giants that are believed to have closed the gap. That competition has made securing investments and partnerships all the more important in large part because of the sizable hardware and energy needs required to hone the models at the core of advanced AI.