Trump waves off criticism from Elon Musk on AI announcement

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump on Jan 23 dismissed criticism from close ally Elon Musk about a US$500 billion (S$674 billion) artificial intelligence (AI) project that Mr Trump announced with great fanfare at the White House earlier this week.

Mr Trump announced on Jan 21 that ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle are planning a joint venture called Stargate, which he said will build data centres and create more than 100,000 jobs in the United States.

SoftBank chief executive officer Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle chairman Larry Ellison joined Mr Trump at the White House for the launch.

Mr Musk, the CEO of Tesla and the world’s richest man, who has become a close adviser to Trump,

is a rival of Mr Altman and is in an ongoing lawsuit with OpenAI.

In a post on social media platform X on Jan 22, Mr Musk doubted that the group could put together the funding for the project.

“They don’t actually have the money,” Mr Musk said. “SoftBank has well under US$10 billion secured. I have that on good authority.”

Mr Trump, taking questions from reporters at the White House on Jan 23, was asked if Mr Musk’s criticism of the AI deal bothered him.

“It doesn’t. He hates one of the people in the deal,” Mr Trump said of Mr Musk. “People in the deal are very, very smart people. But, Elon, one of the people he happens to hate. I have certain hatreds of people too.”

As for Mr Musk’s claims about insufficient funding, Mr Trump said: “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.”

A Trump adviser wondered whether the incident would lead to a split between Mr Trump and Mr Musk, who is leading Trump’s government efficiency project.

“The end may be in sight,” the adviser said. REUTERS