Tech CEOs discuss Trump’s Stargate AI project

Some of the biggest names in technology have clashed after the president. donald trump unveiled its private investment project in AI worth $500 billion.

Earlier this week, Trump announced a joint venture with Open AI, Oracle and soft bench invest billions of dollars in increasing national computing capacity to boost AI development in the United States.

The project, named Stargate, was presented at the White House by Trump, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. Son will be the president of Stargate, while the semiconductor company Arm, microsoft, NVIDIAOracle and OpenAI will serve as key initial technology partners.

Executives pledged to invest an initial $100 billion and up to $500 billion over the next four years.

The first blow was given Elon Musk – a close ally of Trump and himself a key figure in AI with his startup xAI – who reclaimed in a post on their social media platform X that the companies involved in the project “I don’t really have the money” to finance the investment.

“SoftBank has well under $10 billion insured. I have it on good authority,” Musk added in a later post. altman, responding to Musk’s accusationsaying. “Wrong, as you surely know.”

“Do you want to come visit the first site that is already up and running?” Altman added. “This is great for the country. I realize that what is great for the country is not always optimal for your companies, but in your new role I hope you put (America) first.”

Musk chairs the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a major White House government efficiency effort. He was by far Trump’s largest financial backer in the 2024 election.

OpenAI said on Tuesday it had ended an agreement with Microsoft to serve as your exclusive cloud provider. The change in relationship was revealed as part of the Project Stargate announcement.

“I think it’s extremely important for OpenAI to quickly reach other platforms because Microsoft is building its own AI,” Benioff told CNBC. “I don’t think Microsoft will use OpenAI in the future, they will have their own frontier models.”

“They have said very clearly that it is too expensive and too difficult for them, and that they want to have their own,” the Salesforce boss added. “That’s why they hired Mustafa Suleyman (as Microsoft’s chief AI officer), and Mustafa Suleyman and Sam Altman are not best friends.”

Microsoft last year appointed Suleyman, co-founder of from google DeepMind AI Lab, for lead your new AI division.

Microsoft is the largest investor in OpenAI and has invested billions of dollars in the company. It also offers OpenAI models on its Azure cloud platform as part of a commercial agreement between the two companies.

Microsoft CEO Nadella Satya addressed concerns around the tech giant’s relationship with OpenAI on Wednesday, saying the two continue to share a “critical partnership.”

“Sam (Altman) wants to continue with the scaling laws to develop more computing so we can train more models,” Nadella told CNBC. “We have the right of first refusal. He comes to us first. If we meet those needs, then we clear him up. If not, he can go to these other providers.”

When asked about Musk’s claim that OpenAI and other companies involved in Stargate don’t have the funds to offset the full initial $100 billion commitment, Nadella said: “Look, all I know is that I’m fine to my 80 billion dollars.”

Microsoft announced in early 2025 that it plans to spend $80 billion this year building data centers to boost its artificial intelligence efforts.

“I’m going to spend $80 billion building Azure,” Nadella told CNBC. “Customers can count on Microsoft.”

– CNBC’s Eamon Javers and Kevin Breuninger contributed to this report.