Crypto News: Musk caught between his buddy and his rival

President Donald Trump announced a big artificial intelligence project on Tuesday, but at least one key adviser isn't on board. Businessweek senior reporter Max Chafkin writes today about why Elon Musk hates Stargate. Plus: Egg donors are unable to learn which clinics have the fewest adverse outcomes. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up.

There is, perhaps, an alternative universe in which Elon Musk's position in the White House—which so far includes a modest role leading a newly created efficiency committee and a much, much larger role as "first buddy" to President Donald Trump—would prompt serious debates about the conflict of interest inherent in having a major defense contractor attempt to make government policy. That, of course, isn't the world we live in.

Musk has always treated his conflicts of interest like features rather than bugs, seeming to run his nominally independent companies—with their nominally independent shareholder bases—as if they were a single conglomerate. Employees are routinely lent out to other Elon Inc. subsidiaries, crucial supplies are shared, and co-branding opportunities are never missed. This has gotten him into trouble once or twice, but mostly it's worked out, at least for Musk.

Trump and Musk at a SpaceX launch in November. Photographer: Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Whether it will work out for Trump is an open question. Already two senior members of Musk's government efficiency committee—co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy and legal counsel Bill McGinley—have stepped away, ceding greater control to Musk and his close associates. Meanwhile, Musk spent much of the week posting on his social media platform X about two topics, neither of which seems particularly helpful to his new boss' agenda. These are (1) cracking cringeworthy jokes about his "awkward gesture" at a rally on Monday and (2) complaining nonstop about a competitor who showed up Tuesday at the White House for a press event.

That event started well enough. Trump declared that he was using his "first day back" to announce "the largest AI infrastructure project, by far, in American history." He introduced three billionaires—Oracle's Larry Ellison, SoftBank's Masayoshi Son and OpenAI's Sam Altman—who are starting a venture called Stargate. Trump said that the project will eventually invest $500 billion to construct "colossal data centers" for artificial intelligence models and that it would create 100,000 jobs "almost immediately." Son echoed Trump's Inauguration Day message, calling the AI announcement an example of "the beginning of the golden age of America." Altman said Stargate would lead to cures for cancer and heart disease.

It wouldn't have been surprising if Democrats responded by calling the announcement wildly exaggerated. Unfortunately for Trump, most of that criticism actually came from his first buddy. "They don't have the money," Musk wrote Tuesday night, in response to an OpenAI post announcing Stargate. Since then he has tweeted two dozen times about the topic, claiming that he has it "on good authority" that SoftBank had raised only $10 billion to date. He called Altman a "swindler" and a "liar," repeatedly amplified suggestions that Altman is a secret leftist, pointed to connections between a former OpenAI board member and the accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and said that the Stargate project itself was "fake."

This naturally became a story, partly because Musk has a point, at least about the money. There's little evidence that the players have enough cash on hand to put up anywhere near $500 billion, and news reports have suggested they're still raising the first $100 billion they need. Bloomberg reported that the group's first data center, in Abilene, Texas, has promised to create just 57 jobs so far. The Financial Times quoted an anonymous source close to the project saying, "They haven't figured out the structure, they haven't figured out the financing, they don't have the money committed."

Musk's criticism was also noteworthy because Musk is hardly disinterested. He has his own AI company, is building his own mega data centers, and is locked in a legal battle with Altman over OpenAI, which Musk co-founded as a nonprofit and he now claims has been improperly privatized. OpenAI denies this, and Altman so far has tried to shrug off Musk's attacks. "Just one more mean tweet and maybe you'll love yourself," Altman wrote Thursday. Of course, Musk is no stranger to making grandiose and somewhat questionable claims about his AI ambitions and also has a track record about making slightly intemperate financing statements.

That these reasons, rather than Musk's sober assessment of the nation's needs, might be causing him to undermine White House messaging doesn't seem to bug Trump—at least not yet. During a conversation with reporters Thursday, Trump was asked if Stargate's founders had the necessary financing. He said he wasn't sure, but noted "they're very rich people, so I hope they do." Trump said he wasn't bothered by Musk's statements, chalking them up to a normal business rivalry between Musk and Altman: "He hates one of the people in the deal."

For now it seems, Trump is choosing to treat Musk's conflicts of interest and penchant for public outbursts as the price of doing business with him. Which makes sense, both on a practical level and on a personal one. Conventional wisdom has long suggested that the Trump-Musk alliance wouldn't last, because each possesses an oversize ego. But this potential point of conflict could also be a shared bond. Trump and Musk are more alike than not—and there's perhaps no one better equipped to understand Musk's strengths and shortcomings than Trump, who shares many of them. As Trump pointed out after acknowledging Musk's feelings about Altman, "I have certain hatreds of people, too."

In Brief

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A Gap in Fertility Treatment Data

A woman injects herself with a hormone meant to induce superovulation. Photographer: SolStock/Getty Images

For women in the US seeking fertility treatment or considering donating their eggs, there's a fair amount of information they can find about any given clinic or hospital. They might look for data on how many egg retrievals the clinic has done or the ages of its patients. Many times they'll want to know how often treatment resulted in the birth of a baby.

But one thing they won't be able to find out is how often the procedure has gone wrong. That's because while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discloses "success rates," it keeps information about health complications under lock and key.

The data gap is particularly troubling at a time when fertility treatment is increasingly relying on eggs from donors. As egg-freezing technology has advanced, the number of in vitro fertilization cycles using donor eggs has grown more than 170% since 2000, catapulting the egg-banking and donation sector into a $2 billion business in the US, according to investment firm Harris Williams. In December, Bloomberg Businessweek chronicled how a burgeoning global market for human eggs can lead to both exploitation and opportunity, with women traveling far from home to sell their eggs, often evading any oversight.

Unlike with other medical procedures, in which a patient accepts risk in pursuit of a healthier outcome or a woman has her own eggs extracted for IVF treatment, donors tend to undergo egg retrievals in exchange for money. Also, some clinics profit by both extracting and selling a woman's eggs, making transparency all the more important, experts say. Where a woman undergoing IVF may be willing to accept the risk of complications if it means fulfilling her dream of having a baby, the same isn't always the case for a donor.

Jackie Davalos, Rachel Adams-Heard and Kendall Taggart reported on the data gap: The CDC Won't Give the Public a Full Picture of Fertility Treatment Risks

A Lot to Divest

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Documents released by the US Office of Government Ethics show that Howard Lutnick, President Trump's nominee to lead the Commerce Department, has roles in at least that many legal entities. The combative Wall Street billionaire has one of the more complex divestiture situations among Trump cabinet nominees.

The Future of FEMA

"All disasters start and end locally. However, in disasters of the scale of the LA fires, it rapidly requires state and federal support to respond to and support recovery—both short- and long-term—to get communities back on their feet."

Zach Stanford

Emergency management consultant

Fire-wracked Los Angeles has never needed the Federal Emergency Management Agency more. But President Trump has questioned whether the agency that the US turns to whenever major disasters strike should continue to play that role.