Elon Musk threw shade at OpenAI’s Sam Altman on Tuesday after his rival took center stage at the White House to unveil his ambitious $500 billion “Stargate” AI infrastructure project.
Appearing alongside Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, Altman discussed a joint venture to build advanced data centers in Texas that will power advanced AI systems.
President Trump called the plans, which purportedly include an initial investment of $100 billion that could grow by five times that amount, as a “a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential.” However, Musk immediately dished dirt on the project.
“They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote on X in response to an OpenAI post
“SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority,” Musk added, without providing further detail.
Representatives for OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank did not immediately return The Post’s request for comment.
The event marked the most high-profile interaction yet between Altman and Trump — who has recently relied on Musk as a key adviser and appointed to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Altman heaped praise on Trump during the White House event, telling the president that the three companies “wouldn’t be able to do this without you.” The OpenAI boss said Stargate could “create hundreds of thousands of jobs” in the US.
“We will see diseases get cured at an unprecedented rate. We will be amazed at how quickly we’re curing this cancer and that one — and heart disease,” said Altman, repeating that AI would “cure the diseases at a rapid, rapid rate.”
Altman has an ongoing public feud with Musk – who cofounded OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015 but later fell out with its leadership after disagreements about how it should be structured.
When asked about Musk’s close relationship with Trump in December, Altman said it “would profoundly un-American to use political power, to the degree that Elon has it, to hurt your competitors and advantage your own businesses.”
Musk is currently suing OpenAI, Microsoft and billionaire Reid Hoffman in a bid to stop the ChatGPT creator’s plans to become a for-profit entity.
As The Post reported, Musk recently secured a key win in the legal battle after the Justice Department and FTC sided with one of his lawsuit’s key arguments.
The sparring between Musk and Altman is playing out amid an ongoing debate over how artificial intelligence should be regulated under the Trump administration.
Musk is also at the center of ongoing wrangling over the future of China-owned TikTok.
The app was briefly banned over the weekend as Congress’s law requiring its Chinese parent ByteDance took effect, but Trump issued a 75-day executive order delaying enforcement so that TikTok could seek an American buyer.
On Tuesday, Trump said he’s open to Musk or Oracle’s Ellison buying TikTok. Musk already owns the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
“I would be if [Musk] wanted to buy it, yes,” Trump told reporters. “I’d like Larry to buy it, too.”
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives pointed to Musk and Ellison as likely frontrunners as part of a growing field of investors who could buy TikTok.
Ellison-led Oracle was notably part of a joint bid with Walmart to buy the app during a previous effort to ban it in 2020, but the deal ultimately fell through. Oracle is also a cloud computing partner for TikTok.
Trump has called for the US to own 50% of TikTok as part of a joint venture meant to alleviate national security concerns about China’s ownership of the app. However, the exact details of his proposal remain unclear.
For now, TikTok is still unavailable in app stores run by Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft. Service providers face massive fines under Congress’s law if they allow access to the app.
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