U.S. President Trump gestures as Open AI CEO Sam Altman speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House January 21, 2025, in Washington, DC.
Jim Watson | Afp | Getty Images
Before officially becoming president, Donald Trump had a lengthy conversation with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Friday to discuss the potential of artificial intelligence and the need to develop this technology in the United States, CNBC has learned.
During the conversation, Trump was particularly enthusiastic about the idea of developing AI here instead of in China, and what that could mean in terms of creating jobs and signaling confidence in states. -United in his administration, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked. not to be named because the conversation was private.
After Trump’s inauguration on Monday, the president quickly got to work touting the importance of AI. It announced a joint venture with OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank on Tuesday to invest billions of dollars in AI infrastructure in the United States. OpenAI’s participation is notable because Altman is in the middle of a heated legal battle with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Trump’s top financial backer in the 2024 campaign and advisor who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit.
Musk quickly undermined the recently announced project, dubbed Stargate, by writing in an article on X that “they don’t actually have the money” to back up their promise to invest $500 billion. He added that he had “good authority” that SoftBank “obtained well under $10 billion.”
Altman responded Wednesday morning, writing on X that while Musk is “the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time,” his claims are “false, as you surely know.” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in an interview on CNBC, “All I know is I’m good for my $80 billion,” referring to his company’s plans to invest in data centers based on AI this year. Microsoft is the main backer of OpenAI.
Musk, who heads Trump’s new Government Efficiency Advisory Council, is suing OpenAI to try to stop it from transforming into a for-profit entity. The two sides have clashed in court and in public. In a blog post published in December, OpenAI wrote that in 2017, Musk “not only wanted, but actually created a for-profit company” to serve as the company’s proposed new structure. OpenAI released screenshots of Musk’s emails to support its claims.
Even though relations between Altman and Musk have deteriorated, the OpenAI CEO still has ties to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, a big Trump supporter, which has contributed to his standing on the team presidential election, the source said. Oracle and OpenAI entered into a cloud computing partnership in June.
Altman also has a close relationship with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, another source said. Son publicly pledged $100 billion to invest in the United States before the Stargate announcement, and Softbank also backed OpenAI.
WATCH: President Trump speaks out on AI infrastructure investments
