Retiring DOGE hatchet man Elon Musk rushed to the Middle East during Donald Trump’s visit there earlier this month to block a massive American AI partnership with the United Arab Emirates backed by the president – unless it included him, according to a new report.
That apparently explains the tech billionaire’s sudden appearance at a Trump meeting with Saudi Arabia officials during the president’s three-country Middle East tour.
Trump was about to announce a huge AI partnership on foreign soil with America’s OpenAI – run by Musk’s arch rival Sam Altman – and the United Arab Emirates’ G42 company to build a Stargate UAE campus in Abu Dhabi.
The operation would also include America’s Oracle, Nvidia, and Cisco, and Japan’s SoftBank as part of the UAE’s push to become a major AI player. The new venture will be the biggest AI campus outside the U.S.
Open AI touts the venture online as “our first OpenAI for Countries partnership [that] expands global AI infrastructure and access, in coordination with the U.S. government.”
Musk was determined that his own company, xAI, would be part of deal, sources told The Wall Street Journal.
On a call with officials of G42, which is controlled by the brother of the United Arab Emirates’ president, Musk reportedly warned that the plan would not win Trump’s endorsement unless Musk’s xAI company was included.
Musk also wasn’t happy with a deal that benefited Altman. Altman and Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but Musk left the company in 2018 after a power struggle and the two have had a major falling out.
Trump’s team scrambled to soothe an irritated Musk so the president could announce the deal while he was in the Middle East, the Journal reported.
It wasn’t immediately clear if some kind of accommodation was worked out for the tech boss who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the campaigns of Trump and other Republicans, or if he is now part of the deal. He could not immediately be reached for comment. His company has not been named as a participant in the business by any announcement of the deal.
Trump’s wholehearted backing of the AI business arrangement appears to be at odds with his strident opposition against America losing business to other countries.
He appears happy to give away a substantial chunk of the AI store to the Middle East, where he has personal company business deals. But he complains about manufacturing plants in China. Such plants could soon be dwarfed by the value of the burgeoning AI business that will likely draw billions of dollars in investments and create countless jobs in the United Arab Emirates.
Critics of the UAE deal are also concerned that the deal poses a threat to national security, and risks turning the Middle East into a major AI business rival of the U.S.
“What happened to ‘America First’?” California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna asked during a recent interview. “Why don’t we put that center in Pennsylvania or in Ohio?”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has called the new overseas AI operation “another great deal for the American people, thanks to President Trump and his exceptional team.”
