Elon Musk allegedly made an emergency trip to the Middle East during Donald Trump's recent visit to block a major US-UAE artificial intelligence deal until it includes a place for his own company xAI, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources.
This information explains Musk's surprise appearance at Trump's meeting with Saudi officials during the US president's three-day trip to three Middle Eastern countries. Trump had planned to announce the creation of a huge AI data center, Stargate UAE, in Abu Dhabi in partnership with OpenAI, which is headed by Musk's longtime opponent Sam Altman, and the UAE-based company G42. Oracle, NVIDIA, Cisco and SoftBank were also to join the project. The Stargate initiative was announced by OpenAI and SoftBank earlier this year and planned to build AI data centers in the US. At the time, Elon Musk criticized the project, writing on his social network X that "they don't really have the money," for which he received a sharp reaction from Trump's entourage.
However, this did not stop Musk from further interfering in the Stargate project, according to the WSJ, he contacted G42 executives and warned that Trump was unlikely to approve the deal if his xAI was not present in it. He also opposed Altman from benefiting from the deal. Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but Elon left the company in 2018 after a conflict of interest.
Trump's team has been rushing to defuse tensions with Musk in order to announce the deal during the visit, the WSJ reported. It's unclear whether the deal to include xAI was reached, as official announcements of the deal do not mention Musk's company. He and his representatives have not commented on the situation.
Critics of the deal worry that it could strengthen the US's regional AI competitor and threaten national security. "What happened to 'America First'?" asked California Democrat Roh Hanna, arguing that such investments should be directed to the US's domestic regions.
At the same time, White House Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt called the new Middle East project "another great deal for the American people" thanks to the work of President Trump and his "exceptional team."