President Donald Trump's behemoth $500 billion AI infrastructure project, dubbed Stargate, may be doomed from the start.

Trump made the sweeping announcement earlier this week, revealing that the ChatGPT maker, investment company SoftBank, tech giant Oracle, and Abu Dhabi state-run AI fund MGX would initially spend a total of $100 billion on the project, with the eventual goal of reaching half a trillion dollars in just a few years.

But in reality, according to the Financial Times' sources, Stargate may be facing insurmountable financial challenges as it attempts to get off the ground.

"They haven’t figured out the structure, they haven’t figured out the financing, they don’t have the money committed," an unnamed source told the newspaper.

Did Trump put the cart before the horse by making a splashy announcement before the pieces were in place? Critics of the project think it's entirely possible.

The FT's reporting is especially interesting considering this is exactly what multi-hyphenate Elon Musk, a personal enemy of Altman's, accused OpenAI of earlier this week.

"They don’t actually have the money," the mercurial CEO  tweeted just hours after the project was announced.

"SoftBank has well under $10B secured," Musk wrote in a followup an hour later. "I have that on good authority."

It's difficult to gauge the legitimacy of either Musk's or the FT's claims. Could Stargate actually collapse under its own weight, stumbling at the starting line without the necessary funds to build out data centers in the United States?

It's true that SoftBank has had a troubled history with past investments, posting a record $32 billion loss for its Vision Fund in 2023. Many companies the lender has backed have shuttered or filed for bankruptcy, with WeWork being a particularly notable example.

Musk certainly has plenty to gain from voicing his doubts, having founded his own AI company that was passed over by the Stargate program. He's has had an extremely strained relationship with Altman for years.

OpenAI and SoftBank are each expected to commit $19 billion to fund Stargate, as The Information reported on Wednesday. Effectively, each company will hold a 40 percent interest in the project.

The companies behind Stargate claim that work has already begun. Construction began for an Oracle-funded data center in Abilene, Texas, in June 2023, well over a year before Stargate was announced.

But other than that, details about Stargate are notably thin.

"There’s a real intent to do this, but the details haven’t been fleshed out," an unnamed source told the FT. "People want to do splashy things in the first week of Trump being in office."

More on Stargate: Trump's $500 Billion AI Deal Includes Funding by UAE Royal Family Linked to Astonishing Number of Scandals, Including Human Torture

The post There's Apparently a Huge Financial Problem With Trump's Massive AI Project appeared first on Futurism.

Original post:
There's Apparently a Huge Financial Problem With Trump's Massive AI Project