The political and technological landscapes collided dramatically this week as it emerged that President Donald Trump’s administration would be backing the Stargate Project and would partner with OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, bypassing Elon Musk’s xAI in the process. This was a coup for Sam Altman and has resulted in Musk taking to X to trash the high-profile deal, much to the frustration of presidential aids. Musk and Altman have been locked in personal and legal battles in recent months with the former alleging that OpenAI have reneged on previous non-profit commitments.
Musk reposted a joke suggesting that the Stargate team must have been on drugs “to come up with their $500 billion number for Stargate.” Altman shot back at Musk on X: “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 us first.”
The Stargate Project—a wildly ambitious initiative—has been pitched as America’s moon shot for maintaining dominance in AI. ARM, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI and Oracle, and are the initial technology partners. The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft were absent from the press conference due to recent tensions over compute, product competition and strategic direction with OpenAI, and their role as exclusive hosting provider for GPT and o1 has recently ended.
The first Stargate build recently got underway in Abilene, Texas, with the phase being overseen by Oracle. Various plans are mooted to deliver huge amounts of computing infrastructure culminating in several multi-GW data centres that could put the US power grid under significant strain.
Takeaways: Meanwhile the Stargate project is putting the Musk-Trump relationship under strain and will likely not be the last conflict of interest that emerges in the new US political setup. For businesses and governments alike, the situation underscores the increasing role of AI as a tool for geopolitical and strategic commercial power dynamics.