OpenAI exec responds to Muck, Altman is trading business barbs on Stargate: We’re at the ‘tip of the iceberg’
OpenAI CFO Sarah Freer outlines how AI is taking center stage at Davos, what the Stargate project means for the macro economy, and new products for key customers.
OpenAI’s chief financial officer is setting a record for funding President Donald Trump’s artificial intelligence (AI) project.
“I’m close to this deal, I’ve been working on it. If I seem tired, this deal is doing it for me. And I feel very good about where we are,” said Sarah Freer in the morning. With Maria” interview Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“I think at Elon, he’s competitive, but I want us to compete for the right things,” she added.
On Tuesday, President Trump announced a massive $500 billion infrastructure project called Stargate. Major names including Softbank, OpenAI and Oracle are planning to join forces to build more centers for AI development in the US.
Elon Musk’s Dodge faced its first legal challenge within hours of Trump’s inauguration.
The initial investment is expected to be 100 billion dollars and it can reach five times that sum. Microsoft, Nvidia, investor MGX and chipmaker ARM are also partners in the project.
OpenAI CFO Sarah Freer is maintaining the company’s position that they have funding to support the Stargate AI project. (Getty Images)
But Tesla and SpaceX CEO — and now co-chairman of the Department of Government Efficiency — Elon Musk took to X to express doubts about OpenAI’s ability to finance Stargate.
“They don’t really have the money,” Musk posted on X in response to OpenAI’s Stargate post. “Softbank is safe under $10B. I have that on good authority.”
Supporting OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s assertion that Musk is “wrong,” Friar also encouraged Musk-Altman to support Trump’s AI plans despite the split.
President Trump made a major infrastructure announcement on his second day in office.
“Let’s compete to get great results for consumers and businesses. Let’s compete to get investment and jobs to the United States, and for our partners. And let’s compete to make sure we’re driving the right results in terms of security,” the CFO said Thursday.
“And Elon knows that,” Freer pressed, “because at the end of the day, we’re at the tip of the iceberg here. We’re just scratching the surface of what’s to come. This is the age of AI. And so, we’re getting into distractions among ourselves. It seems like it’s undermining the big results we all want.” .
A source familiar with Stargate told Fox Business that Stargate is ready to deploy $100 billion immediately, and companies in the sector are well positioned to make investments.
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Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Brian Schimpf, Founder and CEO of Andril Industries, discuss the future of AI and the ethical use of technology to ‘monetize’.
Attempting to defuse any tensions, Freer argued that Mook, along with OpenAI, fits the industry’s three main needs: “amazing people” and computing and data power.
“That’s why being on a mission is incredibly important to us, isn’t it?” The CFO posted. “We want to make sure we’re a destination for all of those, and we’re going to continue to operate the company the way we envision it to be.”
Fox Business’ Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.