Elon Musk threw shade at OpenAI’s Sam Altman on Tuesday after his rival took center stage at the White House to unveil his ambitious $500 billion “Stargate” artificial intelligence infrastructure project.
Appearing alongside Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, Altman discussed a joint venture to build advanced data centers in Texas that will power advanced AI systems.
President Trump called the plans, which reportedly include an initial investment of $100 billion that could grow by five times that amount, a “resounding statement of faith in America’s potential.” However, Musk immediately dropped dirt on the project.
“They actually have no money,” Musk wrote on X in response to an OpenAI post
“SoftBank has secured under $10 billion. I have this on good authority,” Musk added, without elaborating.
Representatives for OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank did not immediately return The Post’s request for comment.
The event marked the most high-profile interaction yet between Altman and Trump — who has recently tapped Musk as a top adviser and nominee to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Altman praised Trump during the White House event, telling the president that the three companies “wouldn’t be able to do this without you.” The head of OpenAI said Stargate could “create hundreds of thousands of jobs” in the US.
“We will see diseases being cured at an unprecedented rate. We’re going to be surprised how quickly we’re curing this and that cancer — and heart disease,” Altman said, reiterating that AI would “cure diseases at a rapid, rapid pace.”
Altman has an ongoing public feud with Musk — who co-founded OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015 but later clashed with its leadership after disagreements over how it should be structured.
When asked about Musk’s close relationship with Trump in December, Altman said it would be “deeply un-American to use political power, to the degree that Elon has, to harm competitors and benefit your businesses.”
Musk is currently suing OpenAI, Microsoft and billionaire Reid Hoffman in an attempt to stop the ChatGPT creator’s plans to become a for-profit entity.
As The Post reported, Musk recently secured a key victory in the legal battle after the Justice Department and FTC sided with one of the main arguments of his lawsuit.
The fight between Musk and Altman is taking place amid an ongoing debate over how artificial intelligence should be regulated under the Trump administration.
Musk is also at the center of ongoing wrangling over the future of Chinese-owned TikTok.
The app was briefly banned over the weekend after a congressional law requiring its Chinese parent ByteDance took effect, but Trump issued a 75-day executive order delaying implementation so TikTok could seek a US buyer.
On Tuesday, Trump said he was open to Musk or Oracle’s Ellison buying TikTok. Musk already owns social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
“I would be if [Musk] I wanted to buy it, yes,” Trump told reporters. “I wish Larry would buy it too.”
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives pointed to Musk and Ellison as potential top candidates as part of a growing field of investors who could buy TikTok.
Ellison-led Oracle was notably part of a joint bid with Walmart to buy the app during a previous attempt to ban it in 2020, but the deal ultimately fell through. Oracle is also a cloud computing partner for TikTok.
Trump has called for the US to own 50% of TikTok as part of a joint venture aimed at allaying national security concerns about China’s ownership of the app. However, the exact details of his proposal remain unclear.
Right now, TikTok is still unavailable on app stores run by Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. Service providers face massive fines under the congressional law if they allow access to the app.
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