Elon Musk left fuming over Donald Trump’s latest announcement despite partnership

Just yesterday, Donald Trump announced a massive new artificial intelligence (AI) initiative called Stargate as his second term of presidency began.

The plan in question involved a planned $500 billion build-out of AI data centres in the US and, if it ends up coming to fruition, it has the potential to keep the superpower at the very forefront of the technological advancement.

Now, tech mogul Musk has been keeping very close to Trump as of recent - he did, after all, bankroll the Republican leader's presidential campaign.

However, the new AI initiative seems to have left him seriously unimpressed given his blunt six-word response

The news was announced on Tuesday (21 January) with OpenAI's official X account writing: "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. 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."

The statement continued: "This project will not only support the re-industrialisation of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies."

Additionally, OpenAI outlined that the 'initial equity funders' in Stargate are SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX.

"SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners for Stargate, with SoftBank having financial responsibility and OpenAI having operational responsibility. Masayoshi Son will be the chairman," the statement added.

Now, for a bit of context, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Musk were once fairly close as they teamed up back in 2015 to create OpenAI together.

However, the pair have since developed quite the rivalry which only worsened when Musk announced his own xAI operation.

There were some concerns that Musk would use his closeness to Trump to further his own operation - something which Altman directly spoke on last month.

Speaking at a New York Times conference, he said: "It would be profoundly un-American to use political power, to the degree that Elon has it, to hurt your competitors and advantage your own businesses.

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. We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately. This infrastructure will secure…

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 21, 2025

"And I don’t think people would tolerate that. I don’t think Elon would do it."

It didn't take long for Musk to share his thoughts following the announcement, commenting under the post: "They don’t actually have the money."

In a follow-up post, he added: "SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority."

Tyla has reached out to SoftBank for comment on Elon Musk's claims.