Tech Billionaires Announce ‘Project Stargate’ With Trump, But Where’s Elon?

Donald Trump held his first press conference of his new presidency on Tuesday, with three billionaires launching a new partnership called Stargate that they claim will lead to groundbreaking innovations in artificial intelligence. And while they claim that this new company will invest “up” to $500 billion, there are still many details about the project that are still unclear.

The new company included a product of the initial partners Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle and OpenAI, according to a statement posted on X tuesday. And three representatives of the new company, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Oracle’s Larry Ellison, joined Trump at the White House to announce the goal.

Short version? They’re building this weird alliance of tech companies to build data centers and build new AI infrastructure that will be helped by Trump and the US government. And all of this new AI investment will supposedly lead to tools that will help the average person. That seemed to be the message every millionaire wanted to repeat Tuesday. It’s really going to help the average person, they emphasized in a livestreamed press conference YouTube.

“At the same time, the leading technology giants in this world are announcing the formation of Stargate, so put that name in your books, because I think you’re going to hear a lot about it in the future,” Trump said in characteristically overbearing style, “a new American company that will invest $500 billion , at least, in the US AI infrastructure and moving very fast… very fast, 100,000 Americans will create jobs almost immediately.”

Official statements posted by the company were a bit more succinct. The Stargate project plans to invest $500 billion in the United States over the next four years. OpenAI said in a statement Posted in X. But the initial cost would be about $100 billion.

“This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create tens of thousands of American jobs and create massive economic benefits for the entire world,” the statement said. “This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.”

SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son called it “the beginning of our golden age”. And Oracle’s Larry Ellison called it a “very exciting program.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called Stargate “the most important project for this era” and promised that all the new investments his company is making will help cure the disease. Altman was actually prompted by Trump to talk about the medical advances that AI would supposedly uncover.

“I’m hearing a lot of positive things about what it’s going to do for medical research and things, cancer and different problems. How will AI help us fight various problems, diseases etc?” Trump asked Altman.

“I believe that as this technology advances, we will see diseases being cured at an unprecedented rate,” Altman responded. “We will be amazed at how quickly we are curing this cancer and that one and heart disease. And what that would do to the ability to provide very high quality healthcare, the cost. But to really cure diseases at a faster, faster rate, I think that’s going to be one of the most important things in this technology.”

Ellison also emphasized how useful this AI technology will be for health records, specifically allowing doctors to “understand their patients’ conditions and provide better healthcare plans than they would otherwise.”

Elon Musk was noticeably absent from the festivities at the White House on Tuesday. maybe-Nazi-saluting The billionaire who was instrumental in bringing Trump back to the White House. Kasturi is a bitter enemy of his former business partner Sam Altman, and the two frequently speak online. But Musk responded directly to OpenAI’s announcement at X, writing “They don’t actually have the money” and “SoftBank has less than $10 billion secured. I have it on good authority.” No one knows, of course, whether Musk is telling the truth about that.

SoftBank has less than $10B secured. I have that on good authority.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2025

Where does the Trump-Musk relationship go? That’s a good question. But it seems unlikely that the announcement means the two men won’t continue to work together. Trump needs musk and Trump needs musk. And as much as people enjoy writing fanfic about how people hate each other and somehow “know” their relationship will end soon, we’ll believe it when we see it.