Tech executives debate Trump’s Stargate AI project

Some of the biggest names in tech from Elon Musk and to Sam Altman Satya Nadella and Marc Benioff – There are fights behind the president Donald Trump presented its private $500 billion AI investment project

Musk has not yet stopped his war of words, and Tesla The CEO brought him to X because of Altman’s partnership with OpenAI with Axios and his previous support of venture capitalist Reid Hoffman’s past efforts to oppose Trump.

Altman, who Trump joined on stage to announce the artificial intelligence push, posted Thursday morning without directly tagging Musk: “Just one mean tweet and you might just love yourself.”

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

The executives pledged to invest an initial $100 billion and a maximum of $500 billion over the next four years.

However, Musk – a close ally of Trump and himself a key figure in AI with his startup xAI – he proclaimed The companies involved in the project in a post on its X social media platform “I don’t really have any money“To finance the investment.

“SoftBank has less than $10 billion backed. I have that on good authority,” Musk added in a subsequent post. Altman, In response to Musk’s accusationsaid Wednesday, “Wrong, as you surely know.”

They presented the Stargate project the white house on Tuesday Trump, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle founders Larry Ellison. Son will be the president of Stargate, the semiconductor company the arm, Microsoft, NvidiaOracle and OpenAI will serve as key initial technology partners.

Musk heads the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a key White House government efficiency effort. He was Trump’s biggest supporter in the 2024 election.

on wednesday Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff He suggested that the investment plan could create tensions between OpenAI and Microsoft, which are close partners.

OpenAI said it had on Tuesday He ended a deal with Microsoft to serve as its exclusive cloud provider. The change in relationship was revealed as part of the Stargate Project announcement.

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

“They’ve made it very clear that it’s too expensive and too hard for them, and they want to own it,” the Salesforce chief added. “That’s why they hired Mustafa Suleyman (as Microsoft AI CEO) and Mustafa Suleyman and Sam Altman aren’t the best of friends.”

Microsoft named Suleyman, co-founder, last year Google’s AI laboratory DeepMind, to lead its new AI division.

Microsoft is the largest investor in OpenAI, having invested billions of dollars in the company. It also offers OpenAI models on its Azure cloud platform as part of a commercial agreement between the two companies.

CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella The tech giant addressed concerns about its relationship with OpenAI on Wednesday, saying the two continue to share a “critical partnership.”

“Sam (Altman) wants to keep scaling the law to build more computation to train more models,” Nadella told CNBC. “We have the right of first refusal. It comes to us first. If we meet those needs, then we clear it. If not, it can go to those other providers.”

Asked about Musk’s claim that OpenAI and the other companies involved in Stargate don’t have the funds to meet the full initial $100 billion commitment, Nadella said, “Look, all I know is that I’m good for my $80 billion.”

Microsoft announced in early 2025 that it plans to spend $80 billion on data center construction this year to boost 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.