As Musk's White House influence appears to wane
Elon Musk reportedly sought to block OpenAI's involvement in a massive data center campus in the United Arab Emirates.
Earlier this month, a 5GW data center campus was announced by US President Donald Trump, with the project slated for construction by Emirati AI company G42.
A week later, OpenAI revealed that it would use a proportion of the campus for a local Stargate cluster, backed by Oracle and SoftBank.
How much of the 1GW phase one, or the total 5GW, will be used by Stargate is unclear. Other US companies could operate data centers on the campus.
But in the weeks before the project was announced, rival Elon Musk tried to nix OpenAI's involvement entirely, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The White House advisor learned about the project and that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was going to be on the trip, and grew angry about it, saying that his own AI company xAI should be involved.
White House officials reviewed the deal, and ultimately proceeded - but the intervention delayed the project's announcement.
Musk, who donated to OpenAI in 2015 during its non-profit phase, has sued the company and called the CEO 'Scam Altman.' When Trump announced the $500bn US Stargate joint venture, Musk publicly criticized the project and disputed whether it could raise the funds.
While he was unable to block the Stargate deal, xAI could still build on the campus and is on the shortlist of US companies conditionally approved to purchase most of the 500,000 chips permitted annually for export to the UAE.
This chip export allowance was lobbied by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan, the UAE's national security advisor (and chairman of G42), who visited the White House this March.
Nahyan also heads MGX, which has invested billions into both Stargate and xAI.
Musk, meanwhile, announced that he would be stepping back from White House work, with the billionaire controversially running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). He has also criticized the president's tax bill and energy credit cuts.
