TMTPOST -- U.S. President Donald Trump was said to discuss with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on artificial intelligence (AI) topics prior to his inauguration.
Credit：China Central Television
Trump last Friday talked with Altman about AI infrastructure in a phone call last Friday, CNBC quoted people familiar with the matter on Wednesday. During the lengthy conversation on Friday , Trump and Altman were reported to discuss the potential of AI and the need to develop the technology in the United States.
Days following the conservation, Trump announced OpenAI, SoftBank Group Corp. and Oracle Corp. are forming a joint venture called Stargate to pour into a total of $500 billion in AI infrastructure. The venture plans to input a total of up to $500 million with initial investment of $100 billion in AI projects, and is expected to create “over 100,000 American jobs almost immediately”, Trump said in a White House briefing on Tuesday.
“We’re starting off with tremendous investment coming into our country at levels that nobody’s really ever seen before,” Trump told reporters. "What we want to do is we want to keep it in this country. China is a competitor, and others are competitors," Trump said. "It's technology and artificial intelligence all made in the USA."
Stargate will build “the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of AI,” including data centers, according to Trump.
Altman, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison joined Trump for the announcement. Altman touted Stargate will be “the most important project of this era.”
Son said Stargate will immediately input $100 million with the total investment target of “at least” $500 million, including data centers and physical campuses.
Stargate intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States, backed by SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and Abu Dhabi-based tech investment firm MGX as initial equity funders, OpenAI said in a statement.
SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners for Stargate, with the former having financial responsibility and the later having operational responsibility, and Son will be the venture’s chairman, according to the statement. It said Arm Holdings Plc., Microsoft Coporation, Nvidia Corporation, Oracle, and OpenAI are the key initial technology partners.
However, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk poured cold water on Trump’s latest AI initiative right after the announcement. “They don’t actually have the money,” Musk said in response to an OpenAI statement introducing the AI venture Stargate posted on his social media platform X, referring to OpenAI and other backers of Stargate which pledged a total of $500 billion.
“SoftBank has well under $10 billion secured. I have that on good authority,” Musk said in a subsequent post, claiming another Stargate initiator has much less firepower to finance the venture than it promised.
Responding to Musk’s abovementioned post, Altman directly denied Musk’s claim about SoftBank’s liquidity. “Wrong, as you surely know,” Altman said in his post Wednesday. The OpenAI leader suggested Musk’s bashing on Stargate was due to the venture’s competition with his own AI projects.
Musk’s assertion is not true, CNN learned from a source, who pointed out SoftBank has $24.3 billion of cash on its balance sheet per its latest earnings and it is comfortable taking on more debt to help fund the project, the wherewithal to access more capital.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in an interview on CNBC, "All I know is, I'm good for my $80 billion," referring to his company's plans to invest in AI-enabled data centers for its fiscal year 2025 ended in June. As OpenAI's main financial backer, Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI, and expected in November at earnings call around $1.5 billion loss investment loss at OpenAI in the quarter ended December.
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