Kara Swisher Breaks Down Feud Between Elon Musk and Sam Altman | Pivot

1. KSKara Swisher0:00

   President Trump is embracing artificial intelligence in a big way, announcing Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle that aims to build up AI infrastructure in the US. He had nothing to do with it, but he did get to announce it. There's no government money here, just... I got so many people like, "Why is the government giving these people money?" They're not. This is a, this is an initiative. It's just a press release from the White House is what it is. That's why he was there. Had Sam Altman was there, Larry Ellison was there, Masayoshi Son was there, uh, who- all of who have up and down startup experience if some- if you wanna say that. They're sort of big-time investors. So this has been in the works, just so you know. It's been in the works for a long time. (laughs) It's not- this is not a new thing, and I, I believe they offered it to the Biden people to do it sooner, um, and they didn't bite, I suppose. Trump knows how to bite. Trump's done almost nothing here to do that, except for pose with them in the White House, which is not a bad thing. Um, it's already broke ground... I know a lot about this. I've talked to all of the different players in it. Um, and just for, for history's sake, Masa had promised this in the last administration and didn't really make a lot of the investments that he said he was gonna make, the last Trump administration. That said, he's also a very good entrepreneur on many things and a very bad one on others. Um, there also was Foxconn in the last, uh, era. It never got built, which Trump had promised and touted and everything else. That said, this is a much more substantive group of people, um, and they're already building the thing. After the announcement, though, Elon Musk, who was not in the room and purposely not in the room, in case everybody's interested. I have talked to a lot of people. They made sure he wasn't there. He was stirring the pot, posting on X that these companies don't have the capital to invest. Sam Altman responded, "Wrong." He went on to say, "I realize what is great for the country isn't always what's optimal for your companies, but in your new role, I hope you mostly put America first." The word mostly is doing a lot of work. (laughs) It's such a troll. It was such a perfect troll. Um, I think part of... Let me say because I've done a little reporting into it, is, um, uh, they don't have the money yet, but they have a lot of money also, and they'll get the money. I, I've talked to all the parties. Microsoft's a partner, there's other partners, and essentially it's to build a data center, um, and build them all over the country. They still also need energy centers. They need all kinds of chips, building chips here. There's gonna be a lot of this kind of stuff, a lot of money, not much result yet. Um, so start on that because I want to also get into this tech telenovela, as I'm calling it, between Musk and Altman because they continued through the night to troll back and forth, and I'll, we'll talk about that in a minute, but talk about the announcement itself.

2. SGScott Galloway2:34

   Uh, it's genius branding on the part of the administration, the president, because he basically took other people's assets and money and pretended it was his idea. I mean, most of this was underway during the Biden administration, but what he's done is he's branded it and taking credit for it. And most Americans will go, "A hundred- you know, a half a trillion dollars, US government weighing in like the space program, 'We're gonna be number one in AI.' That's leadership, day five," when all he really did was just take an existing, existing efforts and capital and brand it. So, this was brilliant, uh, from the president, quite frankly. The one I don't get, I can't figure out that Masayoshi Son is still hanging around the hoop. Uh, I don't think he's a great entrepreneur. I- I'm convinced, and this is my theory, that Masayoshi Son is an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency that's been tasked with transferring oil capital-

3. KSKara Swisher3:20

   Wow. Oh. Wow. Oh. Oh. Okay.

4. SGScott Galloway3:20

   ... back from the Gulf to American entrepreneurs. Uh, there's been few people that have lost more of other people's money, more of other people's money than Masayoshi Son. And the other big winner, quite frankly, is Oracle.

5. KSKara Swisher3:30

   Mm-hmm. Agree.

6. SGScott Galloway3:31

   Uh, Oracle is all of a sudden-

7. KSKara Swisher3:32

   Yes.

8. SGScott Galloway3:33

   I went to this wonderful... Our friends, uh, Patrick and Tatum had this wonderful Christmas dinner, and there's a kids table and an adults table, and I said my 14-year-old, "Why don't you join the adults table?" And we played these games, and he was just so excited to be there. I feel like Oracle, with this announcement, is officially at the grownups table around AI.

9. KSKara Swisher3:54

   Agreed. They've been behind in this area a lot, quite a bit, and they, they- and, and Sam needs capacity. That's what he needs because he's not getting enough from Microsoft. He's not... He needs computing capacity. That's really the situation, because I'll tell you, Musk has done a great job scaling in terms of doing- shoving all those chips into place, you know, polluting an area of where he was opening one of the things. He's done a great job of scaling, and Altman needs to keep up here and needs to look like he's on his front foot. Um, the two of them, what a relationship. They were very close and now are sort of like archenemies. Um, they've continued this back and forth trolling through the night. Elon's been re-sharing some of Sam's old anti-Trump tweets. They existed. Sam posted he's not gonna agree with Trump on everything, but he thinks he'll be incredible for the country in many ways, very much like Bill Gates saying, "I was impressed with him, more impressed with him than I thought." Obviously, every one of these people is gonna do, you know, a kiss ass to Trump because it works so well. Um, and- but Tr- Elon's trying to paint him as anti-Trump. Elon should be careful. Elon... I have some texts from Elon that are not so positive towards Donald Trump. Um, you know, a lot of them were not pro-Trump, a lot of them, and then they were. And, and in this case, I think Sam is doing it for, I would imag- I, I think a lot of people are pissed at him for doing it, and I can see why, uh, but he's, uh, he's, he's definitely, um... All these people are gonna say Trump's gonna be incredible. It's the only way to get through to this guy. Um, but it's interesting that Elon was sort of shoved out a little bit here, um, which I think is vintage Trump. Again, I think a winner f- a win for Trump to have all these people competing. That's my feeling.

10. SGScott Galloway5:31

    Yeah, but I, I initially thought that, that, "Oh, this was Trump saying, 'I'm on top.'"

11. KSKara Swisher5:35

    Mm-hmm.

12. SGScott Galloway5:35

    But basically, Trump just played the hand he was dealt. This, this, this group-

13. KSKara Swisher5:39

    Mm-hmm. Interesting.

14. SGScott Galloway5:39

    ... I think was already assembled-

15. KSKara Swisher5:40

    Yeah.

16. SGScott Galloway5:41

    ... and already on their way, and he just wanted credit for it. I do think-

17. KSKara Swisher5:43

    Mm-hmm.

18. SGScott Galloway5:43

    ... though, that this is probably the beginning of the end of their bromance because I don't think Trump likes sharing the mic with anyone. Like M- M- Musk fired Vivek because he didn't want to share the mic with Vivek. Musk is used to doing whatever the fuck he wants. And Trump, when he appoints you to something, and now you're off hogging all of the media echo chamber and you're criticizing his new pet project, I gotta think that Trump and his folks are like, "All right, everybody said we couldn't control this guy, but we were under the impression he wouldn't, he wouldn't shit post us, you know, five days into the administration." I gotta think that, I gotta think that Trump and his circle are like, "Okay, uh, this is not..."

19. KSKara Swisher6:27

    But what do they do? They rely on his money. They want to use him as a cudgel against the primaries. They gave him a West Wing office, not an-

20. SGScott Galloway6:34

    Yeah. Fair point.

21. KSKara Swisher6:34

    ... not an East Building office. So you got to-

22. SGScott Galloway6:36

    So you're saying he's more powerful, there's nothing they can do?

23. KSKara Swisher6:38

    Except they kept him out of this meeting. They... I mean, people there, you know, one of the, one of the many people involved said it was the greatest engineering feat of all time to keep him out, right? So I think... And, and I think Sam felt emboldened to attack him, right? Or to make fun of him. What's really interesting about Musk that you really have to understand is he loves to troll people. I- He loves to troll people. It gives him his greatest pleasure. He loves... "If I do this, what will they do?" I've heard, heard out of his mouth so many times. Like, it's usually a stupid prank, right? Um, and that he got pushed back on by, by Sam, who he's also in a lawsuit with, with OpenAI, by the way, calls him a liar all the time, et cetera. Um, that he got pushed on... When he gets pushed back on, very typical bully, he gets all mad, he gets all beside himself. He can't... He trolls, but he can't take a troll in any way with any sense of humor whatsoever. And so I think that's something Trump will not like. And Sam is a more appealing character, like if he's assembling billionaires to have around him. You know, you, you want the Gateses and the Sams and the Tim Cooks. Musk is a lot if you have him in proximity, and he takes a lot of attention.

Episode duration: 7:53