How Altman, Musk, Ellison and Son took control of AI in the US.
The history of tech is often told as an epic of dazzling innovations, dizzying funding rounds and visionaries shaping the future, blah blah blah. But behind those stories, as in plenty of other circles, lies a struggle of oversized egos, tangled interests and battles for influence.
For a few months now, a battle worth billions of dollars (and a lot more) has been playing out between four figures, among the most influential and the richest in the world.
Elon Musk
Sam Altman
Larry Ellison
Masayoshi Son
Sometimes allies. Sometimes rivals. Their paths cross, cross again, part and defy each other over more than a decade, through a perfectly controlled, hushed narrative. But Trump’s return has changed everything. Between political ambitions, score-settling and dirty tricks, the border between Silicon Valley and the White House has never been so porous.
And in the middle of it all is Elon Musk, who built his empire on public money while preaching absolute freedom, and who now, paradoxically, finds himself at the helm of DOGE, a government body created by Trump to “optimise” American spending. A position that lets him directly influence sectors where he has colossal interests: Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI… with, at the end of it, an unprecedented concentration of power.
How far can these power struggles go? Is the war for AI just a clash of titans, or the prelude to a deeper shift? One thing is certain: behind the tweets and the grandiose statements, a far more strategic fight is being played out.
And it is hard to tell who will come out on top.
