Mark Cuban says the AI arms race explains why Zuck, Musk, and Dell have cozied up to Trump - and why it may pay off

"Mark Cuban thinks the spectacle of Big Tech CEOs cozying up to Donald Trump has less to do with politics than with survival in the world's most expensive technology race. In an interview with "The Tennessee Holler" podcast on Thursday, the billionaire investor and former Shark Tank star said leaders like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Michael Dell are operating under the shadow of an AI arms race - one that pits US companies against China and Silicon Valley giants against each other."

""So why did all these guys - Zuckerberg, Elon, Michael Dell, etc. get on their knees, and why did they get especially gold-crusted knee pads when they went to the White House?" Cuban asked. The calculus, he said, is simple: Trump may only be in office for a few years, but AI dominance could define entire generations. "So if you're them, Mark Zuckerberg, and you're spending $50 billion a year and you're literally borrowing money, if it means you need to bend the knee to Donald Trump, guess what? He's 41 years old," he said of Meta's CEO."

""You have to put yourself in their shoes. There is a war to win AI. There's one war between us and the rest of the world, particularly China," Cuban said. "And then there is Gemini at Google versus Meta, ChatGPT at OpenAI. You've got Grok at xAI, Perplexity. We don't know if that's going to be a zero-sum game.""

Big Tech executives cultivated relationships with Donald Trump to secure favorable political and regulatory conditions necessary for pursuing AI supremacy. The AI competition frames both an international contest with China and a domestic rivalry among firms such as Google, Meta, OpenAI, xAI and Perplexity. The strategic calculus values long-term AI dominance over short-term political costs because AI leadership could shape generations. Massive investments and borrowing to fund AI development drive executives to seek access to power even when that courting provokes criticism. The pursuit reflects survival-driven efforts to gain advantages in a potentially zero-sum technological race.

Read at Business Insider