Elon Musk slams Japanese firm over payments, and Sam Altman may be to blame
Elon Musk has made an open complaint against Japan's biggest companies, Softbank. In a reply on X, formerly Twitter, to Katie Miller, Elon Musk about Softbank not paying for its turbine orders. Tesla and Spacex CEO wrote, "SoftBank is defaulting on their turbine orders." Stargate is a $500 billion multi-year initiative to build AI data centers for training and inference, backed by major investors including Oracle.Incidentally, Softbank is one of the biggest investors in Sam Altman's OpenAI.
Elon Musk and Sam Altman have turned from business partners to foes over the years. Coming to Elon Musk's 'payment complaint' against Softbank, he made it in reply to a post from Katie Miller where she has shared a screenshot on the US President Donald Trump's much-famed Stargate project. Announced in January 2025, Stargate project's three biggest partners are Nvidia, Oracle, Softbank and OpenAI.
According to the post, "A mystery seller is trying to dump about $500 million in data center loans all at once, per Bloomberg, days after the midterms raised doubts about many projects. The anonymous seller is auctioning a dozen loans, including a $25 million piece of financing for a huge Stargate site in New Mexico, the joint project of OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle. Oracle has already sent that site’s developer a force majeure notice, a legal claim that events beyond its control may excuse it from its obligations."Elon Musk's 'no money' warning on Stargate projectMusk has been warning about the project from Day One.
Just hours after, Stargate project was announced. In an X post, Elon Musk claims that Stargate doesn’t have the money it says it does.“They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote in a series of posts on X on Tuesday. “SoftBank has well under $10 billion secured. I have that on good authority.”Hours later, in a reply to a post criticizing Altman, Musk said, “Sam is a swindler.”It didn't end there.
Altman fired back at Musk in an X. He wrote, “Wrong, as you surely know,” Altman said, responding to Musk’s allegation that SoftBank was short of capital. “[Stargate] 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 [US] first.”In another post, Altman said of Musk, “I genuinely respect your accomplishments and think you are the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time.” He later added, “I don’t think [Musk is] a nice person or treating us fairly, but you have to respect the guy, and he pushes all of us to be more ambitious.”OpenAI, SoftBank $1 billion investment in SB Energy as part of Stargate projectIn January this year, SB Energy, a SoftBank-owned company, announced that it will build and operate OpenAI's previously announced 1.2-gigawatt data center site in Milam County, Texas.
As per the deal, SB Energy will also become a customer of OpenAI, using its APIs and deploying ChatGPT for employees.The partnership "accelerates our delivery of advanced AI data center campuses and associated energy infrastructure at the scale required to advance Stargate and secure America's AI future," SB Energy co-CEO Rich Hossfeld had said.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient.
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