Musk questions funding for Stargate, OpenAI’s $500B venture with Oracle and SoftBank

TFW you’re not picked… for the group project. Elon Musk said yesterday that Stargate — a joint venture that plans to pour $500B into the US’s AI infrastructure — doesn’t have the $$ to do it. His comments failed to put a damper on AI-linked stocks, which kept rallying after Trump gassed up Stargate’s plan to build infrastructure for OpenAI with heavy involvement from Oracle, SoftBank, and Nvidia. Japanese investment giant SoftBank will handle financials, OpenAI will run ops, and partners including Oracle, Nvidia, Arm, and Microsoft will contribute tech (think: chips, servers).

• Stargatekeep: Musk said on X: “They don’t actually have the money” and “SoftBank has well under $10B secured.”

• Clapback: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman replied that Musk was wrong, adding, “I realize what is great for the country isn’t always what's optimal for your companies.” 

• Hard flex: Separately, Microsoft boss Satya Nadella said, “I’m good for my $80B.”

Bird’s-AI view… The group behind Stargate, which began making plans during the Biden admin, has already started building data centers in Texas and said it’ll deploy $100B ASAP to build more infrastructure domestically. The White House doesn’t want America to lose its lead in the global AI race, especially against China, which is as little as six months behind. It’s estimated that $1T will be spent building US data centers over five years.

• Not just money: Training and running AI models requires vast amounts of energy. Running one ChatGPT query takes 10x the power of a Google search, and CGPT’s annual electricity use could charge 3M electric cars.