Musk-Altman feud reaches White House with battle for Trump’s approval

President Trump and Elon Musk aren’t an exclusive item. That point was clear this week when the president welcomed OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman to the White House on the second day of Trump 2.0—a visit that left “First Buddy” Musk publicly fuming.

Abraham Lincoln had his “team of rivals.” And, it appears, Trump is going to have dueling entrepreneurs with big dreams competing for his attention and adoration.

The long-running feud between Musk and Altman reached uncharted waters of the White House as the tech billionaires try to sell the president and America on their sci-fi dreams for the future: traveling to Mars and creating godlike AI.

Altman, locked in a legal battle with Musk over OpenAI, made a savvy move to ingratiate himself and his AI company with Trump. The step was an apparent end-run around Musk, who has been working closely with the president, including toiling this week from a West Wing office.

At a time when other Big Tech Bros have made a bet that kowtowing to Musk while currying favor with Trump was the safest play, Altman made a bolder move.

He offered Trump one thing that the president is known to love from business leaders: headline-grabbing announcements about big American investments.

Nothing was bigger, however squishy in detail, than what Altman had Trump announce on Tuesday at the White House: a $500 billion plan—dubbed Stargate—to build infrastructure needed to make Altman’s AI dreams real. Technology that, Altman said, holds the promise of someday helping cure diseases at unprecedented rates.

“We will be amazed at how quickly we’re curing this cancer and that one, and heart disease,” he said.

Altman was joined by partners in the project, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, for what was called the beginning of a “golden age,” language that echoed from Trump’s own inauguration speech a day earlier.

President Trump with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison.

Trump called Altman “by far the leading expert, based on everything I read,” in AI. In response, the CEO credited the president with the project—even though parts of it began long before this week.

“I think this will be the most important project of this era,” Altman said. “To create hundreds of thousands of jobs, to create a new industry centered here, we wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President.”

The public embrace of Altman comes with a risk of angering Musk, whose own response, in turn, threatened angering the White House. A real dance-with-dragons situation.

The Tesla and SpaceX chief executive hasn’t been shy in saying he turned, in part, to supporting Republicans after feeling slighted by former President Joe Biden’s White House embracing rival automakers and their suggestion that General Motors was a leader in making electric vehicles. For years, Musk, who appointed himself Technoking, has also fashioned himself as a leader in artificial intelligence, warning governments around the world about the dangers of AI.

So maybe it wasn’t surprising that Musk was unhappy to see his nemesis at the White House.

His public reaction, however, roiled the chattering class in Washington, who clearly hadn’t been closely following the public feud between Musk and Altman. The two have had a war of words that’s gripped Silicon Valley as OpenAI’s breakthroughs have garnered attention and Musk has fought back with his own competing AI startup, xAI.

In a string of X postings, Musk undermined the White House announcement with just about every accusation possible—from calling Altman a swindler to questioning his loyalty to the president and claiming the group lacked funding for Stargate.

“This is great for the country,” Altman wrote at one point. “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’ll mostly put [America] first.”

Trump’s second administration has, so far, been fueled in large part by dreams—the implicit promise that comes with the slogan “Make America Great Again.” He rode into office with an atypical mixture of populists and elites who’ve already shown fraying relations after November’s victory as they publicly bicker about the direction of Trump 2.0 from government spending to immigration policy.

Amid some of the biggest internal flare-ups has been Musk using his powerful bully pulpit to help shape public debate and media coverage.

This week, Trump gave supporters plenty to snack on during his inauguration celebration: His talk of planting the U.S. flag on Mars had Musk cheering. Then there were executive orders to appeal to those dreaming of cryptocurrency, cracking down on illegal immigrants, freeing J6 “hostages,” even those who pine for a “Gulf of America.”

“If we work together, there is nothing we cannot do and no dream we cannot achieve,” Trump said after being sworn-in as Musk sat behind him on stage at the U.S. Capitol.

The challenge comes when those dreamers run into each other, as they did with Musk and Altman.

Musk has built his fortune and reputation on selling his vision for the future to investors, customers and, this past fall, voters. At the core of Musk’s vision is traveling to Mars.He celebrated Trump’s new term as a big step toward achieving that goal. “Can you imagine how awesome it will be to have American astronauts plant the flag on another planet for the first time?” Musk said at a post-inauguration rally.

The latest episode of Musk stepping on a Trump move renewed a question among insiders from Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley to K Street in Washington, D.C.: Is this finally the time his public antics cracked their nascent bond?

The Trump-Musk relationship, after all, is still fairly new. After a publicly contentious relationship, Musk only publicly endorsed Trump in July, pouring more than $250 million into helping get him elected as well as wielding his social-media influence for the cause.

For now, it would seem, Trump understands Musk, big egos and personal grudges.

After almost two days of tension, Trump weighed in Thursday when asked if he was bothered by Musk’s actions. The president shrugged it off, saying he continues to talk to each man.

“He hates one of the people in the deal,” Trump told reporters of Musk, adding, “I have certain hatreds of people, too.”

Write to Tim Higgins at tim.higgins@wsj.com