Elon Musk, White House adviser, says OpenAI deal announced at White House is a sham

Elon Musk doesn’t miss an opportunity to take a dig at OpenAI — even when the news item in question is supposed to be favorable to President Trump. Just a few hours after yesterday’s White House presser on The Stargate Project wrapped up, Musk posted on X that “they don’t actually have the money.”

Softbank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX have committed to “deploy” $100 billion now and $500 billion toward the AI data center company over the next four years.

But Musk, who now has wide-ranging clearances and reportedly even his own office inside the Trump White House, seems doubtful. “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority,” he added. The Japanese CEO and billionaire investor is the former owner of WeWork and Sprint and the current owner of Arm, and there have been reports for the last year that, along with Altman, he’s been chasing funding to invest in an AI chip venture.

Musk and OpenAI are embroiled in a legal battle that often veers into public view, with Musk accusing the ChatGPT maker of steering AI in dangerous directions — and OpenAI saying his criticisms are disingenuous and in bad faith. Sam Altman replied to Musk’s allegation on Wednesday morning. At first, he chose to focus on the man himself rather than anything having to do with Stargate. “I genuinely respect your accomplishments and think you are the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time,” Altman posted.

But he got more pointed in a later response, telling Musk that “I realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies.”

The Stargate Project has a buildout “currently underway” in Texas, and the companies involved say they’re evaluating other sites across the US. Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and OpenAI have been named as the project’s initial tech partners. “The scale of this investment, obviously, is huge. And what I think that says about the likely progress of the technology, at least what all of us believe, is correspondingly huge,” Altman said in a Fox News interview last night.

Update, January 22nd 12:40PM ET: The article has been updated to reflect a follow-up reply towards Musk from Sam Altman.