How Sam Altman Sidestepped Elon Musk to Win Over Donald Trump
The New York Times
After helping President Trump get elected, Elon Musk was poised to dominate the country’s A.I. policies. Then Mr. Altman sneaked into the White House.
At President Trump’s inauguration, Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, was relegated to the overflow room while other tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg took prime spots on the dais under the Capitol rotunda.
But days earlier, before flying into Washington, Mr. Altman was on the phone with Mr. Trump, preparing an announcement that would outflank Mr. Musk and put Mr. Altman’s company at the center of the new administration’s agenda for artificial intelligence.
On the 25-minute call, Mr. Altman appealed to Mr. Trump’s love of a big story and of a big deal. Mr. Altman told the president-elect that the tech industry would achieve artificial general intelligence — the hypothetical moment when technology matches human intelligence — during the Trump administration, according to three people familiar with the call. And to get there before competitors from China, OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank had completed a $100 billion deal to build data centers across the country.
The day after the inauguration, Mr. Altman stood behind Mr. Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House as Mr. Trump announced the deal, called Stargate, and described it as the “largest A.I. infrastructure project by far in history.”
Stargate had been in the works for months, but Mr. Altman and his partners timed the announcement to allow Mr. Trump to take credit for it in his first days in office.
“We wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President,” Mr. Altman said in front of a gathering of reporters.
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