Elon Musk bashes the US$500 billion AI project Trump announced, claiming its backers don’t ‘have the money’

U.S. President Donald Trump, left, announced an investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure, opposed by Elon Musk, right. (Andrew Harnik/Kevin Lamarque/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

Shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a new massive AI infrastructure investment from the White House, “First Buddy” Elon Musk tried to tear it down.

“They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X. “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.”

Trump said the investment will create a new company, called Stargate, to grow artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. The leaders of SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle stood alongside Trump during the announcement. Their respective companies will invest $100 billion in total for the project to start, with plans to pour up to $500 billion into Stargate in the coming years.

The comments are a notable takedown of a major White House project from someone that is in Trump’s innermost circle. As a sign of how involved Musk is in the first days of the administration, Musk said he was in the Oval Office on Tuesday as Trump signed a pardon for Ross William Ulbricht, founder of the dark web marketplace SilkRoad. Musk had also dispatched a top staffer from his SpaceX and X companies to help ensure the release of convicted January 6 rioters after Trump signed a blanket pardon.

But perhaps it should not be a surprise that Musk is going after an OpenAI initiative. Musk is in an ongoing lawsuit with OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, who was at the White House for the announcement. Musk, who has said he “doesn’t trust” Altman, claims in the lawsuit the ChatGPT has abandoned its original nonprofit mission by reserving some of its most advanced AI technology for private customers.

The companies involved in Stargate have not publicly disclosed how they will contribute the funds, but they don’t necessarily need the money in the bank to support it — they could raise debt or sign on other equity investors.

Altman replied directly to Musk’s claim on X, writing “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.”

A source familiar with Stargate said Musk’s assertion is not true.

Softbank, the source pointed out, has $24.3 billion of cash on its balance sheet per its latest earnings and that it is comfortable taking on more debt to help fund the project, the wherewithal to access more capital.

The source pointed out that MGX has $100 billion in capital commitments, Oracle has $11 billion in cash on its balance sheet and OpenAI recently announced it has more than $10 billion from its recent round of venture capital.

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, which is working with OpenAI on Stargate, said on CNBC Wednesday “all I know is I’m good for my $80 billion.”