Musk, Altman Feud Is Reignited by Stargate Deal

Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Max Chafkin breaks down the dynamic between tech CEOs -and one time collaborators- Sam Altman and Elon Musk as they vie for influence and investment in the new Trump administration.

There is, perhaps, an alternative universe in which Elon Musk’s position in the White House—which so far includes a modest role leading a newly created efficiency committee and a much, much larger role as “first buddy” to President Donald Trump—would prompt serious debates about the conflict of interest inherent in having a major defense contractor attempt to make government policy. That, of course, isn’t the world we live in.

Musk has always treated his conflicts of interest like features rather than bugs, seeming to run his nominally independent companies—with their nominally independent shareholder bases—as if they were a single conglomerate. Employees are routinely lent out to other Elon Inc. subsidiaries, crucial supplies are shared, and co-branding opportunities are never missed. This has gotten him into trouble once or twice, but mostly it’s worked out, at least for Musk.

Whether it will work out for Trump is an open question. Already two senior members of Musk’s government efficiency committee—co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy and legal counsel Bill McGinley—have stepped away, ceding greater control to Musk and his close associates. Meanwhile, Musk spent much of the week posting on his social media platform X about two topics, neither of which seems particularly helpful to his new boss’ agenda. These are (1) cracking cringeworthy jokes about his “awkward gesture” at a rally on Monday and (2) complaining nonstop about a competitor who showed up Tuesday at the White House for a press event.

That event started well enough. Trump declared that he was using his “first day back” to announce “the largest AI infrastructure project, by far, in American history.” He introduced three billionaires—Oracle’s Larry Ellison, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and OpenAI’s Sam Altman—who are starting a venture called Stargate. Trump said that the project will eventually invest $500 billion to construct “colossal data centers” for artificial intelligence models and that it would create 100,000 jobs “almost immediately.” Son echoed Trump’s Inauguration Day message, calling the AI announcement an example of “the beginning of the golden age of America.” Altman said Stargate would lead to cures for cancer and heart disease.

It wouldn’t have been surprising if Democrats responded by calling the announcement wildly exaggerated. Unfortunately for Trump, most of that criticism actually came from his first buddy. “They don’t have the money,” Musk wrote Tuesday night, in response to an OpenAI post announcing Stargate. Since then he has tweeted two dozen times about the topic, claiming that he has it “on good authority” that SoftBank had raised only $10 billion to date. He called Altman a “swindler” and a “liar,” repeatedly amplified suggestions that Altman is a secret leftist, pointed to connections between a former OpenAI board member and the accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and said that the Stargate project itself was “fake.”

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