Topline
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella joined fellow big tech CEO Elon Musk in swiping at the Stargate artificial intelligence megadeal unveiled by President Donald Trump earlier this week, with Nadella’s indirect criticism coming as a potential surprise given Microsoft’s significant financial backing of generative AI unicorn OpenAI, Stargate’s head of operations.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at CES last year.
Key Facts
In a viral clip, Nadella responded Wednesday to CNBC asking his thoughts on Musk questioning whether Stargate had adequate money to fund the joint venture, saying: “All I know is I’m good for my $80 billion,” referring to Microsoft’s commitment to building data centers this fiscal year announced Jan. 3.
Stargate said Tuesday it had $100 billion in initial funding and $500 billion in funding over the next four years.
Nadella later responded to a clip of his interview shared by Musk on X, and said: “And all this money is not about hyping AI, but is about building useful things for the real world!”
Accompanying Tuesday’s Stargate announcement was a Microsoft blog post saying the Washington-based tech titan is a “partner on Stargate” and “remains a major investor in OpenAI,” but it’s no longer the exclusive cloud computing provider for OpenAI.
Key Background
Stargate is a joint venture to build out the physical sites needed to store the immense amount of data used to power artificial general intelligence. American firms OpenAI and software and hardware company Oracle are equity partners in Stargate, as are the Japanese and Emirati investment firms SoftBank and MGX. The AI infrastructure project was announced by Trump at the White House alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Oracle chairman Larry Ellison and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son (all four men are billionaires). Despite being nearly inseparable from Trump in recent months, Musk tore into Stargate on social media, deriding the venture as “fake” and claiming on social media the project “doesn’t actually” have the money it announced, which a source familiar with Stargate’s financing refuted.
Tangent
The messy Stargate drama among big tech leaders got personal between Altman and Musk, as Altman insinuated his rival’s criticism traced back to it being a win for OpenAI over Musk’s generative AI competitor xAI, while Musk called Altman a “swindler” and resurfaced Altman’s prior criticism of Trump. Musk and Altman cofounded OpenAI as a non-profit in 2015 before Musk split from the company in 2018, and Musk sued OpenAI last year over the organization’s move to pursue profits.
What We Don’t Know
Exactly how much Microsoft owns of OpenAI, Altman’s private company which is most famous for its ChatGPT chatbot first released in 2022. Microsoft invested close to $14 billion into OpenAI from 2019 to 2024, but how much equity the $3.3 trillion Microsoft will get in OpenAI when it converts to a for-profit entity is not yet determined, according to the Wall Street Journal. The companies’ arrangement includes a complicated structure entitling Microsoft to $17 billion of OpenAI profits and a further 49% of profits until an unknown cap, in which OpenAI keeps all profits. The private OpenAI was last valued at $157 billion in a $6.6 billion funding round announced in October, with Microsoft investing almost $1 billion in that round, according to the Journal.
