STORY: :: January 23, 2025
:: Washington, D.C.
:: Trump waves off criticism from Elon
Musk about Project Stargate
(Reporter) "Related to your AI EO, just hours after you made that big Stargate announcement, Elon Musk tweeted that they don't actually have the money. Is that true?"
(Trump) "I don't know if they do, but, you know, they're putting up the money. The government is not putting up anything. They're putting up money. They're very rich people. So I hope they do. And I mean, Elon doesn't like one of those people."
(Reporter) "Do you think AI is going to replace many American jobs?"
(Trump) No, no, no. It's going to create tremendous numbers of jobs. It's going to also create a lot of benefits medically for cancer research and other things. It's going to have a huge positive impact. And we're ahead of China now because of what I'm doing. And I think it's going to be very successful."
:: It comes a day after a Musk said backers OpenAI,
SoftBank and Oracle 'don't actually have the money'
Trump announced on Tuesday that ChatGPT's creator OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle are planning a joint venture called Stargate, which he said will build data centers and create more than 100,000 jobs in the United States.
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison joined Trump at the White House for the launch.
Musk, the Tesla CEO and the world's richest man who has become a close adviser to Trump, is a rival of Altman and is in an ongoing lawsuit with OpenAI.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Musk doubted the group can put together the funding for the project.
"They don't actually have the money," Musk said. "SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority."