Elon Musk has bashed the $500bn AI investment made by US President Donald Trump, claiming that those backing the megadeal ‘don’t have the money’.
Musk is a strong ally of Trump, and spoke at his inauguration in Washington on Monday. Musk has also been christened as his ‘first buddy’ by some commentators.
The US President was flanked by SoftBank CEO, Masayoshi Son, Oracle CTO, Larry Ellison, and OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman.
Trump said the investment would lead to the creation of a new company called Stargate.
It is designed to grow artificial intelligence infrastructure across the United States, the companies pledged to invest $100bn to get the project off the ground, and have plans to pour up to $500bn into Stargate over the forthcoming years.
However, Musk took to his social media platform X, to express his opinion on the announcement, which Trump made at the White House yesterday.
It should come as no surprise that Musk was critical of the deal, considering his long-time foe Sam Altman, is one of the main faces of the Stargate project.
Posting on X, Musk said, “They don’t actually have the money. SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.”
Altman hit back on X saying Musk was wrong, and that just because the investment announced may not be the most optimal thing for his companies, he declared that it was great news for the United States.
Altman said, “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.”
What is Project Stargate – and what is the main objective?
The primary objective of Stargate is to build state-of-the-art AI data centres that are 10x faster, and will be run on renewable energy.
Who are the major players in the project?
In terms of who the main players are, SoftBank is funding it, OpenAI is leading it, and Oracle, NVIDIA and Microsoft are powering the technology behind all of it.
Why is it important?
AI is the future. The project hopes to create over 100,000 new jobs, fuel innovation in industries such as healthcare, and tackle head on the issue of compute power in AI.
