Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei expressed skepticism about the financing for rival OpenAI’s $500 billion infrastructure venture and called the planned project “a bit chaotic.”
In an interview with Bloomberg News at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, Amodei said it’s “hard to make head or tail” of OpenAI’s new “Stargate” joint venture with SoftBank Group Corp., Oracle Corp. and other partners. The effort, announced by President Donald Trump at an event on Tuesday, is focused on building out the physical infrastructure needed to support AI development.
“It’s not clear how much money is actually involved and how much of that was committed,” Amodei said. He added that it’s also unclear what the government’s involvement in the project will be.
OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman have spent months working to build a global coalition of investors to support boosting the supply of chips, energy and data center capacity for AI services. In its announcement for “Stargate,” OpenAI said the venture will “begin deploying $100 billion immediately,” with plans to invest $500 billion over the next four years. But some of OpenAI’s top rivals have expressed doubts about the financing.
Elon Musk, the billionaire Trump ally who helped found OpenAI before launching a competing company, suggested the funding for “Stargate” is not a done deal. “They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote on X, his social media platform. In response, Altman said Musk’s assertion was “wrong, as you surely know.”
While he raised questions about “Stargate,” Amodei said the Trump administration’s focus on building energy capacity for AI infrastructure inside the US is “a good thing.” He also expressed support for streamlining regulatory and permitting processes and downplayed the impact of Trump rescinding the Biden administration’s executive order on AI.
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“The executive order was actually a relatively simple thing that didn’t do much,” Amodei said. The order, signed in 2023, had required artificial intelligence companies to share safety test results and other critical information for powerful AI systems with the federal government. “I think it was a good thing but also not a big deal that it’s being taken away.”
Amodei said Anthropic has had conversations with Trump’s team about AI policy. Amodei also said he hopes the new administration will continue Biden’s policy around chip exports restrictions on China, citing concerns about an authoritarian government gaining control of advanced AI technology.
“I’m very worried about 1984 scenarios, or worse,” he said.