A new crack has appeared in the alliance between President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk, who helped bankroll much of Trump's voter outreach operation and now heads up his "Department of Government Efficiency" task force. Specifically, when Trump, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and other tech giants announced the $500 billion Stargate Project to build new artificial intelligence infrastructure, Musk publicly slammed the announcement and proclaimed "they don't have the money" to build it.
Behind the scenes, Trump staffers are enraged that Musk sandbagged the president's announcement, Politico reported.
"A White House official said Musk 'very much' got over his skis when the tech tycoon launched a daylong screed against the AI project," reported Dasha Burns and Holly Otterbein. "One Trump ally said Musk abused his closeness to the president. Another Republican close to the White House went further, saying Trump’s staff is 'furious' over Musk using his massive social media platform to pour cold water on the infrastructure deal that Trump called 'tremendous' and 'monumental' just a day prior." That ally added, “It’s clear he has abused the proximity to the president. The problem is the president doesn’t have any leverage over him and Elon gives zero f---s.”
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Musk and Altman have had an adversarial relationship for years. The two co-founded OpenAI, the creator of the ChatGPT AI language model. However, Musk left the company in 2018, and the two have publicly attacked each other, with Musk even calling Altman "Swindly Sam." Musk now has his own AI platform competing with Altman's.
For his part, Altman has retorted to Musk's attacks on his project by posting, “This is great for the country. I realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies, but in your new role I hope you’ll mostly put [American flag emoji] first.”
Already, the working arrangement between Trump and Musk has caused some difficulties; at the end of last year, Musk blew up a bipartisan spending deal to keep the government open and pushed Trump to his side, forcing the GOP to scramble to craft a replacement. Additionally, Trump aides have grown uncomfortable with how frequently Musk hangs around Trump.