On Tuesday, President Trump was joined by the leaders of SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle to announce a massive $500 billion investment in AI technology infrastructure in the United States.
The announcement was the biggest of Trump’s young presidency from an infrastructure investment standpoint, but there might be a big problem with the announcement.
The companies who made the announcement do not have the funding to follow through with the pledge, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The revelation, reported by The Journal, comes from Trump insider Elon Musk, who tweeted late Tuesday and early Wednesday that the companies involved do not have the $500 billion.
Late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, Musk wrote on X, his social-media platform, that two of the companies behind the project don’t have enough capital to follow through on their pledges.
The comments offered a glimpse into the sometimes awkward dynamic between the new president and Musk, the billionaire who Trump has tasked with slashing government spending and streamlining federal bureaucracy. And they signaled that Musk won’t pare back his unfiltered online commentary now that Trump has taken office.
“They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote at 11:35 p.m. ET on Tuesday, tagging in his post OpenAI, the ChatGPT maker that announced the joint venture with global tech investor SoftBank Group and database company Oracle. At 12:57 a.m. on Wednesday morning, Musk added, “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.”
The White House and the companies didn’t respond to requests for comment about Musk’s social-media posts.
Musk has been a close advisor to President Trump throughout his campaign and leading up to his inauguration but has had longstanding tensions with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI.
It has not been disclosed how much each company will contribute to the project.
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