A war of words between Elon Musk and Sam Altman intensified on social media Thursday, as two of the most powerful men in technology argued over rival artificial intelligence initiatives.
The latest exchange began after OpenAI, where Altman is CEO, was revealed as a key player in Stargate, the AI infrastructure project announced this week by President Donald Trump and which comes with an investment massive.
“Actually, they don’t have the money,” Musk wrote in a lengthy post on his social platform X about the new venture. It was not immediately clear who Musk was initially referring to, but Musk quickly followed up, naming SoftBank, Stargate’s main backer.
“SoftBank got way less than $10 billion. I have it on good authority,” he said, without further details. Neither Musk nor his electronic car maker Tesla have released formal links.
Altman responded by praising Musk – “I sincerely respect your achievements and think you are the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time,” he wrote on SoftBank fakes.
“I realize that what is great for the country is not always what is optimal for your businesses, but in your new role, I hope you will put (America) first,” he said. he added, using an American flag emoji.
In his remarks to reporters Thursday, Trump weighed in on the dispute, but gave no indication that Altman’s or OpenAI’s status on the project was under threat.
Without mentioning Altman by name, Trump mentioned Elon Musk when referring to “one of the people he hates.”
“But I also have certain hatreds toward people,” Trump said.
This dispute has its origins in an ongoing lawsuit filed by Musk, co-founder of OpenAI, over control of the company, but was reignited after Trump’s announcement this week that OpenAI would be part of the $500 billion Stargate initiative designed to make the United States a world leader in AI .
Late Wednesday and Thursday, Musk continued to hammer Altman, repeatedly citing messages made during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign in which Altman appeared to denounce Trump.
Around 8:30 p.m., Altman posted that he had recently changed his mind about the president: “looking at @potus more carefully recently has really changed my view on him (I wish I had thought more about it,” he said stated in part: “I’m not going to agree with him on everything, but I think he will be amazing for the country in many ways!
On Thursday morning, Altman posted, responding to Musk: “one more mean tweet and maybe you’ll like each other…”
The duel between Musk and Altman is a sign of both the struggle within the tech community to curry favor with Trump and how the race for AI is pushing for technological dominance. If producing new user-friendly devices was once a tech company’s way to power, the struggle to create the most advanced form of AI has almost completely taken over.
The situation also highlights the tension of Musk’s role as both Trump’s top adviser and one of the world’s most powerful — and combative — business moguls. Musk has his own interest in AI through social media platform X, which launched Grok, its rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, in November.
The simmering feud between Altman and Musk goes back years, long before Musk’s emergence on the American political scene and even before the recent explosion in artificial intelligence technology. Companies have rushed to invest in AI infrastructure and development, so much so that it represents a significant portion of recent U.S. economic growth. A Goldman Sachs paper published in June, well before Project Stargate was announced, predicted that capital spending on AI could exceed $1 trillion.
OpenAI was generally considered the leader in AI development, although it faces major competition from other startups as well as many of the big tech giants that have reportedly been filling the gap. This competition has made securing investments and partnerships all the more important, in large part because of the significant hardware and energy requirements needed to perfect the models at the heart of advanced AI.
