U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order related to AI to "make America the world capital in artificial intelligence," his aide told reporters in the White House's Oval Office.

Donald Trump axed all that yesterday as he signed a flurry of new executive orders. One of his first actions was to rescind 78 Biden-era executive actions, including Executive Order 14110 on “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.”

Elon Musk, the close Trump adviser who has his own AI company and was notably not at the press conference, mocked the effort relentlessly online. “They don’t actually have the money,” he posted on X.

President Donald Trump talked up a joint venture investing up to $500 billion for infrastructure tied to AI by a new partnership formed by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank.

One further force promoting AI innovation could be defence spending. America puts only a tiny fraction of its $850bn defence budget into AI. Silicon Valley executives hope that the Trump administration will allow more participation by startups building AI weapons and systems in the competition for defence contracts.

Stargate — the joint venture between OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle — is starting its AI infrastructure plans with 10 data centers in Texas.