Elon Musk is casting doubt on the first major tech investment announcement made by President Trump, openly questioning the administration he now serves.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump announced a joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle to create at least $100 billion in computing infrastructure to power artificial intelligence, some of which is already underway.
But in two late-night messages on X, Mr. Musk said that the venture, dubbed Stargate, did not have the financing to achieve the promised investment levels.
“They don’t have the money,” Mr. Musk wrote in reply to an OpenAI post on the announcement. “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.”
The dismissal by Mr. Musk, who is one of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers and will head up an agency created to slash the nation’s budget, is one of his first public breaks with the administration. It’s also an unusual move for any senior policy official to question an initiative trumpeted by the president.
Mr. Trump claimed the A.I. announcement as an early trophy, taking credit for the companies’ decision to spend up to $500 billion building data centers, which are huge buildings full of servers that provide computing power. Mr. Trump promised to clear regulatory hurdles for the development of A.I. and to make the United States a global leader in the technology, beating out China.
Stargate already has $100 billion in hand, two people familiar with the venture said. SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX, an investment group in the United Arab Emirates that focuses on A.I., provided the financing.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied the suit’s claims.)
Mr. Musk has been battling with OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman. Mr. Musk, who helped found the company, has sued OpenAI and Mr. Altman for antitrust violations.
Mr. Musk formed a rival called xAI in 2023, well after a boom in the technology that included the debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The start-up recently raised $6 billion in funding.
Mr. Altman took to X Wednesday morning to refute Mr. Musk’s assertions.
“Wrong, as you surely know,” Mr. Altman wrote. “Want to come visit the first site already under way?”
Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have grown close over the past few months after the tech mogul came out in support of the president’s campaign, eventually donating more than $250 million to back his run. Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, became a vocal supporter, using his megaphone on his social media company X to stump for Mr. Trump.
Mr. Musk also is the chief executive of Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX.
“Elon Musk is a walking conflict of interest,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, Public Citizen. “People throughout history have tried to influence government, but what makes him so unique is his close friendship with Donald Trump, along with the breadth of his businesses that are affected by government contracts, tax and other public policies.”
Mr. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During the presidential transition, Mr. Musk planted himself in a cottage at Mar-a-Lago with easy access to planning meetings. He’s been omnipresent by Mr. Trump’s side, bringing Mr. Trump to a SpaceX rocket launch, attending Mr. Trump’s New Year’s Eve party and sitting with other tech moguls at the inauguration on Monday.
On Wednesday, Mr. Musk reposted commentary from a tech investor that repeated claims that the Stargate initiative didn’t have enough funding. The post by Gavin Baker, managing partner and chief investment officer at Atreides Management, said that “Stargate is a great name but the $500b is a ridiculous number and no one should take it seriously,” unless Softbank was willing to sell off certain assets.