Last week, Trump had a phone conversation with Sam Altman of OpenAI

Before officially becoming president, Donald Trump had a lengthy conversation with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to discuss the potential of artificial intelligence and the need to develop this technology in the US, CNBC reports.

During a chat on Friday, Trump was particularly animated by creating artificial intelligence in the U.S. instead of having it developed in China, and what that could mean for U.S. jobs and confidence during his administration, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked no name because the conversation was private.

After Trump’s inauguration on Monday, the president quickly got to work touting the importance of AI. He announced the joint venture on Tuesday with OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank invest billions of dollars AI infrastructure in the U.S. OpenAI’s involvement is notable because Altman is in the midst of a heated legal battle with Tesla General director Elon Muska Trump adviser and major financial backer in the 2024 campaign, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit.

musk to cut sharply recently announced the project, dubbed Stargate, writing in a post on X that the joint ventures “virtually don’t have the money” to back up their pledge to invest $500 billion. He added that he knows “on good authority” that SoftBank is “providing well under $10 billion.”

Altman responded to Musk on X on Wednesday morning, saying he thinks Musk is “the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time” but that his claims are “wrong, as you probably know.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told CNBC, “All I know is that I’m ready for my $80 billion,” referring to his company’s plans to invest in AI-enabled data centers in the year. Microsoft is the main financial backer of OpenAI.

Musk, who heads Trump’s new government efficiency advisory board, is Sue OpenAI to try to keep it from becoming a for-profit entity. The two sides have argued during court proceedings and in public. In a blog post in December, OpenAI wrote that in 2017, Musk “not only wanted, but actually created a non-profit company” to serve as the proposed new company structure. OpenAI released screenshots of emails from Musk to back up its claims.

While Altman’s relationship with Musk has soured, Altman still has ties to the Oracle CEO Larry Ellisona big Trump supporter, which helped his position on the president’s team, the source said. Oracle and OpenAI entered into a cloud computing partnership in June.

Altman also has a close relationship with SoftBank CEO Masaeshi Son, another source said. Son publicly pledged to invest $100 billion in the US ahead of the Stargate announcement, and Softbank has also backed OpenAI.

WATCH: President Trump is talking about investing in AI infrastructure