Trump shrugs off Elon Musk’s criticism of AI announcement: ‘He hates one of the people’
CNN
President Donald Trump on Thursday shrugged off an ugly back-and-forth between tech CEOs Elon Musk and Sam Altman that pitted one of Trump’s most visible lieutenants against a key participant in a massive $500 billion AI project Trump announced Tuesday.
President Donald Trump on Thursday shrugged off an ugly back-and-forth between tech CEOs Elon Musk and Sam Altman that pitted one of Trump’s most visible lieutenants against a key participant in a massive $500 billion AI project Trump announced Tuesday. Musk had undercut Trump’s Tuesday Oval Office AI announcement, casting doubt on his X social media platform that any of the participating companies had the money to fund it. But Trump Thursday told reporters at the White House that Musk’s commentary was just a case of bad blood, because he “hates one of the people in the deal” – not an indictment of the viability of the deal he had announced. “No, he hates one of the people,” Trump said, in an apparent reference to Altman. “I’ve spoken to Elon, but—spoken to all of them, actually. The people in the deal are very, very smart people– but Elon, one of the people he happens to hate. But I have certain hatreds of people too.” Shortly after Trump announced the new massive AI infrastructure investment between Altman’s OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, Musk wrote on his social media platform X, “They don’t actually have the money. SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.” Pressed on Musk’s comments Thursday, Trump told reporters, “I don’t know if they do, but you know, they’re putting up the money– the government’s not putting up anything, they’re putting up money. They’re very rich people, so I hope they do.” Trump had announced the investment will create a new company, called Stargate, to grow artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. The leaders of SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle stood alongside Trump during the announcement. Their respective companies will invest $100 billion in total for the project to start, with plans to pour up to $500 billion into Stargate in the coming years.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and Chairman of Oracle appeared is set to appear at the White House Tuesday afternoon alongside President Donald Trump and other tech CEOs to announce a massive private sector investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States., a source familiar with the discussions confirmed to CNN.