Elon Musk’s little antics blow up in Trump’s face

Chairman Donald Trump is quickly learning the downsides of stocking his second administration with tech-bro plutocrats: namely, the big egos and public outbursts that tend to come with it. On Tuesday, the president announced a joint venture with the private sector to invest up to $500 billion in America’s AI infrastructure. But Trump didn’t have that before announced this tent initiative, dubbed Stargate, than his advisor and “comrade” Elon Musk moved in to break up the company. “They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote the X. “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.”

SoftBank, the Japanese investment firm, is just one of three private partners in the new program, which also includes OpenAI and Oracle. But Musk has history with all three, somewhat positively. SoftBank, for example, considered a big investment in Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, seven years ago. However, those talks stalled due to disagreements between Musk and the SoftBank CEO Masayoshi’s sonwho later fought a global alliance of electric car manufacturers that would have competed with Tesla. Musk also co-founded OpenAI, another partner in the deal, but subsequently left over disagreements about the organization’s management and direction. He has since maintained one on-again, off-again feud with OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman.

The feud escalated publicly on Wednesday as Musk and Altman traded barbs over the new project. “I realize that what’s good for the country isn’t always what’s best for your companies, but in your new role, I hope you’ll mostly put first,” Altman wrote to Musk on X. In response, Musk appeared again a 2021 post from Altman’s where the CEO appeared to celebrate former President Joe Bidenelection victory in 2020. Musk has also since retweeted a number of other posts criticizing Altman and OpenAI or implying that he is not sufficiently loyal to Trump. “What a liar,” he wrote by Altman on Wednesday night, referring to Altman’s recent change of heart about his company’s nonprofit status.

The infighting is not a terribly good look for the Trump administration or the Stargate initiative, both of which have been quite cautious about the source of the promised funds and the exact goals of the Stargate itself. Wednesday press secretary in the White House Caroline Leavitt said “the American people should take President Trump and the CEOs at their word – these investments are coming to our great country and American jobs are coming with them.” CNN reports that all three companies involved in the deal appear to have enough cash to cover their obligations and that they could also take on debt or new investments to help finance the project.

That may be Musk’s real beef with Stargate: not the possibility that it will fail—but the possibility that it will succeed. The project potential rivals Musk’s personal ambitions in the AI ​​space, which includes his year-old start-up xAI, X chatbot Grok, and the development of the world’s largest supercomputer in Memphis.

It’s one of many conflicts of interest that Musk brings to his role in the Trump administration, and one of many likely fault lines between the president’s new Silicon Valley converts and his older, more ideological backers. Steve BannonTrump’s former political strategist, appears to have already run out of patience with Musk. “There is something fundamentally wrong here,” he told Politico on Wednesday and urged the White House chief of staff Susie Wiles to “sit (Musk) down” and “fix it”.