OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is gushing over president Donald Trump's mammoth $500 billion AI infrastructure project, dubbed Stargate.
The buzzy initiative made headlines in January, with the likes of OpenAI, Japanese investment group SoftBank, and the software giant Oracle pledging a combined $100 billion to build enormous data centers to run extremely power-hungry AI models.
Altman, who has an enormous vested interest in the project, is heaping praise on the Trump administration's priorities.
"President Trump has been very good, very clear about the need for policy to let people build data centers and power quickly," Altman said at a recent tech conference in Manhattan, as quoted by Bloomberg.
"The speed with which the crew building there right now is going, it’s just extraordinary," he added, referring to an enormous Stargate data center, which is currently being built in Abilene, Texas.
In short, it's exactly the kind of groveling and rehashing we'd expect from the CEO of one of the leading AI companies. OpenAI has benefited greatly from an administration that has looked very kindly on the AI industry. In January, Trump signed an executive order that revoked existing Biden-era AI policies, in a purported effort to remove "barriers to American leadership" in AI.
Last month, Republican lawmakers also slipped language into the Budget Reconciliation Bill that would ban states outright from introducing AI regulations or laws.
Trump's Stargate project, in particular, has had investor funds flowing, with contractors landing nine-figure credit lines to build out data centers.
Altman personally appeared in the White House alongside Trump during the January announcement. And with the dollar signs figuratively popping up in his eyes, the CEO kissed the ring.
"Watching POTUS more carefully recently has really changed my perspective on him," he tweeted at the time. "I'm not going to agree with him on everything, but I think he will be incredible for the country in many ways!"
Complicating matters is that the relationship has angered billionaire and AI rival Elon Musk, who cofounded OpenAI alongside Altman in 2015, but rage quit in 2019.
Things got so heated that Trump reportedly adjusted the schedule of a recent trip to the Middle East and canceled a public announcement of a new OpenAI deal to calm a scorchingly jealous Musk down.
The two billionaires have butted heads on a number of occasions. In February, Altman excoriated the richest man in the world.
"I feel for the guy," he told Bloomberg at the time. "I don't think he's like a happy person. I do feel for him."
Considering the spectacular implosion of Musk's relationship with the president, Altman appears to have had the last laugh. With Stargate data center buildouts well on the way, the CEO is set to cash in in a big way as the AI hype cycle continues.
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