OpenAI’s Project Stargate sparks reactions from Microsoft, Meta CEOs

“All I know is I’m good for my $80 billion.”

Rarely does a one-liner so perfectly capture the state of the moment. Here, you have Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella saying he’s “not in the details” about Stargate, the supposedly multi-hundred-billion AI infrastructure project driven by his marquee investment, OpenAI.

Nadella not being read in on the nebulous details of Stargate says a lot about how much Microsoft and OpenAI have drifted apart. Microsoft is mentioned in the Stargate press release since OpenAI’s models are still exclusive to Azure. But the most striking aspect of Stargate is not that the money isn’t there for it yet; it’s that OpenAI’s biggest backer has decided to not participate in what Sam Altman is calling “the most important project of this era.” As Nadella made clear on CNBC this week, he’s running his own, $80 billion AI infrastructure buildout and, going forward, OpenAI can get additional compute — with his blessing — elsewhere. 

While it received fewer headlines this week, I found Nadella’s response to Elon Musk on X even more illuminating. In his response to Musk saying, “on the other hand, Satya definitely does have the money,” Nadella responded: “😂 And all this money is not about hyping AI, but is about building useful things for the real world!” 

That post can only be interpreted as a dig at Altman. Nadella could have funded Stargate for OpenAI. He didn’t. What does he know that the rest of us don’t?

The splashy Stargate unveiling at the White House certainly accomplished its goal, which was clearly getting everyone to talk about big numbers. The headlines it generated prompted Mark Zuckerberg to make sure everyone ended the week knowing his data center will be even bigger than Stargate.

In a Friday post on his Facebook page, Zuckerberg said that Meta’s planned 2GW data center in Louisiana “is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan,” with a map view of the square footage overlaid on the city to send the point home. 

From his post (my emphasis added): “We’ll bring online ~1GW of compute in ‘25 and we’ll end the year with more than 1.3 million GPUs. We’re planning to invest $60-65B in capex this year while also growing our AI teams significantly, and we have the capital to continue investing in the years ahead.”

I have no doubt that Altman, Masayoshi Son, and Larry Ellison will be able to raise the billions they need to lessen OpenAI’s dependence on Microsoft for compute. (The US government isn’t giving money to Stargate, which makes the optics of announcing it alongside Trump all the more bizarre.) Ultimately, this all points to the theme that is quickly coming to define 2025: Big Tech sees AI as the most existential technology of the coming era and will keep spending like hell to make sure OpenAI doesn’t completely run away with it.

Few companies had as good of a 2024 as Reddit. Since going public last March, the company’s stock has soared 300 percent, giving the social network a valuation of $32 billion.

It’s an about-face from where Reddit was before going public, when its moderators were raging against its hurried platform changes and there was backlash to the company selling its data to Google and OpenAI.

With those controversies now seemingly in the rear-view mirror, Reddit is focused on growing its user base, staying profitable, and using AI to help people search its site more easily. I caught up with CEO Steve Huffman at CES a few weeks ago to hear his priorities for 2025, how he’s leading Reddit, his thoughts on the AI scaling debate, content moderation, and more…

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity:

Your IPO did very well. What have the last nine months or so been like for you personally?

We have a saying at Reddit that good numbers make good meetings. So we’ve had some good meetings.

Preparing to go public was intense. It’s telling the story over and over and over, which I enjoy doing, but it’s a lot of work. I think more than most new companies, we are in the public company rhythm already: close the quarter, do the audits, do the board meeting, earnings, and all of that. So it hasn’t been a major change for us from an operating point of view.

It’s a really exciting time for the new investors and employees. You won’t catch us complaining. What I keep telling the company is that everyone should be very proud of the work they’ve done and don’t take these moments for granted. I just tell them, look, enjoy the view. If you look at our history, there are lots of ups and downs. No doubt there are challenges in our future.

With your market cap where it is now, are you thinking of making swings you didn’t think you could make a year ago?

There are two classes of things that we would do. One is to execute the core strategy. We’ve got to hire. We’ve got to build. I think we’re very reasonable in terms of our investment size. The one sentence strategy for us is to grow the product and stay profitable. 

What can you do with a high stock price? Maybe you can look at M&A that you wouldn’t otherwise. I’d say that’s not really our orientation right now because the acquisitions we’ve done over the last two years have been these 25-to-50-million-dollar deals. It’s kind of a sweet spot for us to get tech and teams. I’d say we’re always watching the market, but we’re not pursuing anything big or crazy right now because I like the core strategy. I think we can do what we want to do within our current capabilities.

What’s the main product focus for Reddit this year? 

The first is the core of Reddit, which is community conversations. Everyone has a home on Reddit, but do you see that home in your first session? There’s a whole other dimension to our work, which is Reddit as an information source. Reddit has all of this incredible information. For the users who have a question that needs an answer, can we give them that answer? We just got into testing Reddit Answers. I’m finding that really helpful for searches about current events. A year from now, it’s a monetization product. It’s one of the few products where it kind of scratches every itch, so it’ll be a big focus. 

What do you make of this debate about whether the AI industry has run out of data?

I think we’d have a different answer to that question literally every month. We want to have good relationships with other people in this space. We’re open for business.

At the same time, we want to maximize the value we get out of our own data. We have not experienced conflict between the two at this point. I love the [data licensing] relationships we have — the major ones being Google and OpenAI. At this point, we don’t need to make any particular partnership. I’d say they’re all nice to have but nothing is existential for us. 

One of the challenges is that the AI companies don’t know what product they’re building. It’s not a bad thing. They are iterating themselves. ChatGPT itself, the central product in this conversation, was a demo. Then, a year later, it’s the most important piece of enterprise technology on Earth with questionable economics. That makes it very exciting. I don’t think any of these companies would be offended to hear me say that. 

You were one of the first social media CEOs I saw to be very critical of TikTok. How does a US ban affect Reddit?

If you look at Reddit’s traffic graph over the last 19 years, you will not see the rise and fall of any particular platform. I think every content type should work on Reddit. Video on Reddit is largely camera-out — what I’m looking at — as opposed to camera-in, or who am I? That’s social media. I think the ban is the right thing to do for reasons I’ve mentioned that honestly have nothing to do with competition. 

With Meta’s moderation changes, the broader conversation around social media feels like it’s changing right now. 

For the last 10 years, people have been talking about whether speech is the problem,  which is a crazy thought. You can’t have freedom without speech. I think that detour through questioning and relitigating core values of America, hopefully that era is coming to a close.

Are people playing politics? Of course, people always are. On the topic of moderation, we always just try to do things the right way, which, not coincidentally, are aligned with American values. It’s a Democratic platform. We believe very much in the power of people and the wisdom of crowds and voting processes. That is Reddit. So I’m glad to see a return to where we have been most of my life, which is an appreciation for free speech. 

• Competitors pounce on TikTok: With TikTok no longer available in US app stores and its in-app functionality technically constrained, everyone is doing their damndest to take advantage of the situation. Meta pre-announced its Capcut competitor and is trying to lure creators away with cash. Substack, Bluesky, and X are all making moves to encourage more video consumption. Meanwhile, President Trump says he’s OK with Elon Musk or Larry Ellison buying it. ByteDance is saying it wants to do a deal but seems increasingly backed into a corner. Ellison may have the guarantee that Oracle won’t be fined out of existence for violating the law right now, but Apple and Google have shown they are going to follow the letter of the law. With TikTok still not available to download in the US, its competitive threat to Meta, YouTube, and others decreases every day.
• Trump gets to work for Big Tech: Why are Zuckerberg and other CEOs bending the knee? Look no farther than the comments the president made at the World Economic Forum this week, where he trashed the EU’s Digital Markets and Services Acts as a form of “taxation.” This kind of push back is exactly what Meta and other US companies have been praying for. We’ll see if it works for them.
• More headlines: OpenAI released its AI agent called “Operator” for pro-tier subscribers… Musk told X employees that “user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even”…. Apple reorged again as it plays catch-up in AI… Google is putting another $1 billion into Google Cloud via Anthropic and acquired part of HTC’s Vive team to beef up its Android XR efforts (yes, get ready for the return of Glass)… Epic Games gave an update on its push to compete with Roblox… Meta made a rare investment in Databricks.

• What led to the DOGE falling out between Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk.
• A profile of DeepSeek, the Chinese firm that has a bunch of CEOs worried about how much they’re spending on models.
• Dan Shipper’s hands-on experience using OpenAI’s Operator agent.
• The “Humanity’s Last Exam” AI dataset.
• Brian Armstrong’s takeaways from Davos.
• A whistleblower is claiming Amazon’s $400 million deal for most of Covariant AI was a “reverse acquihire” designed to avoid antitrust scrutiny.
• Nvidia is the top tech company in Glassdoor’s latest list of the top places to work.
• The rise of the MAGA-bro podcast.

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As always, I want to hear from you, especially if your data center is even bigger. Respond here, and I’ll get back to you, or ping me securely on Signal.