Musk calls White House Stargate deal a sham

Hours after the White House officially unveiled the massive $500 billion Stargate Project, someone already tried to pull the plug on the hype.

That someone was Elon Musk, who now holds significant influence and reportedly his own office inside the Trump White House.

Calling out the cash flow

The Stargate Project is an ambitious AI data center venture backed by SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX. The group pledged an initial $100 billion, with plans to scale to $500 billion over four years.

Tech partners like Nvidia, Microsoft, and Arm are already on board, and ground has reportedly broken on a facility in Texas.

Musk immediately hopped on X to cast doubt on the whole thing. He wrote that they don't actually have the money.

He then specifically took aim at SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, claiming on good authority that SoftBank has well under $10 billion actually secured.

Altman claps back

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman replied on Wednesday morning, starting with some polite misdirection before dropping a sharp jab.

Altman first praised Musk, calling him the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time.

Shortly after, Altman followed up with a much spicier take, telling Musk that what is great for the country is not always what is optimal for his companies.

The two are already locked in bitter legal disputes over OpenAI's shift away from its founding mission, with OpenAI dismissing Musk's attacks as bad-faith posturing.

Why it matters

Pledging $500 billion is easy in a press release, but backing it with hard cash is entirely different. Musk's attack points directly to the uncomfortable gap between Silicon Valley announcements and real financial commitments.

We think Musk's claim about SoftBank's liquidity probably holds some water. Masayoshi Son has spent the past year hunting for funding for chip ventures, and SoftBank rarely deploys tens of billions in pure equity up front without massive leverage.

At the same time, Musk is far from a neutral observer. His own startup, xAI, is fighting OpenAI tooth and nail for GPUs, capital, and White House attention. Seeing his biggest rival lock down the administration's flagship AI project obviously threatens his own playbook.

Ultimately, this feud shows that frontier AI is no longer just about model architecture. It is an infrastructure war mixed with White House palace intrigue, and users waiting for cheaper compute should take these astronomical headline numbers with a grain of salt.