The stakes have never been higher with AI looking poised to upturn human life in the coming years, and sparks are flying between the people who are at the forefront of these changes.
Elon Musk and Sam Altman have traded barbs on X over OpenAI’s announcement of a $500 billion funding commitment to build its datacenters. “Announcing The Stargate Project: The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States,” OpenAI had said on X today. “We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately. This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world. This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies,” it had added.
The announcement had also been made by Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son in the presence of new US President Donald Trump and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX had committed the astonishing $500 billion sum for the project.
But Elon Musk — who has been suing Sam Altman for turning OpenAI from a non-profit to a for-profit company — wasn’t impressed with the announcement. “They don’t actually have the money,” Musk replied to OpenAI’s post, hinting that these investors put together didn’t have the $500 billion that they’d committed. He further claimed that Softbank had less than $10 billion to put into the project. “Softbank has well under $10 billion secured. I have that on good authority,” he added.
But Sam Altman didn’t take the claims lying down. “I genuinely respect your accomplishments and think you are the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time,” he replied, apparently sarcastically, below Musk’s claim that these companies didn’t have enough money to fund the $500 billion. But Altman also went on to adopt a harsher tone — he said that Musk’s claims of having less than $10 billion secured wasn’t accurate. “Wrong, as you surely know. Want to come visit the first site already under way? This is great for the country. I realize 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 America first,” Altman replied.
This is quite a war of words between Elon and Altman, who had once co-founded OpenAI but have turned bitter rivals in recent years. But there might be some substance to Musk’s concerns over these companies not having the $500 billion to put into this project — Softbank, Oracle and OpenAI are together sitting on less than $20 billion in cash, and Softbank, in particular, might need to liquidate some of its holdings in companies like ARM or Alibaba to raise the funds. Also, OpenAI has an incentive to announce an outsized funding round — it could not only demoralize OpenAI’s competitors, but also help it attract the best engineering talent. Sam Altman, though, seems to say that the funding is in place, and has even invited Elon Musk to come and visit the first datacenter. It remains to be seen how OpenAI’s $500 billion investment plays out, but with Sam Altman recently calling Elon Musk a “bully”, and Musk questioning OpenAI’s funding claims, it’s clear that there’s no love lost between two of the biggest figures in the AI space.