Shortly after ChatGPT was released to the public in late 2022, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees that they were on the cusp of a new technological revolution.
OpenAI could soon become “the most important company in the history of Silicon Valley,” Altman said, according to two former OpenAI employees who heard his comments.
There is no shortage of ambition in the US technology industry. Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos often talk about transforming the world. Elon Musk aims to colonize Mars.
Even by those standards, Altman’s aspirations stand out.
After reaching a deal with Microsoft that removes limits on how OpenAI raises money, Altman laid out even more ambitious plans to build an AI infrastructure to meet growing demand for AI-powered tools.
In a livestream on Tuesday, Altman said OpenAI was committed to developing 30 gigawatts of computing resources for $1.4 trillion. Eventually, he said he would like OpenAI to be able to add 1 gigawatt of compute each week, an astronomical sum given that each gigawatt currently has a capital cost of more than $40 billion. Altman said that, over time, capital costs could be cut in half, without saying how.
“AI is a royal sport,” said DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria. “Altman understands that to compete in AI he will need to achieve a much larger scale than OpenAI currently operates.”
But Altman has offered few details about how he might achieve his biggest ideas.
Altman has previously said that OpenAI is exploring a variety of creative funding options. OpenAI has also struck a series of unusual and seemingly circular deals with public companies like Nvidia. The transactions have drawn criticism that they create the illusion of more growth than is realistic, raising the specter of an AI bubble.
In January, Altman flew to the White House to announce Stargate, a $500 billion artificial intelligence infrastructure project the company is working on with Oracle, SoftBank, Nvidia and cloud provider CoreWeave.
Standing next to US President Donald Trump, whom he had once criticized as “irresponsible”, Altman said the initiative would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. “We couldn’t do this without you, Mr. President,” he said.
At the time, Altman said Stargate would build 10 GW of data center capacity, which has now tripled based on his comments on Tuesday.
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Altman has no shares in OpenAI and earns only $76,000 a year
Those plans are just the beginning, Altman said. To support massive investment, he said, “we eventually need to reach hundreds of billions a year in revenue.”
That would require OpenAI, which is expected to hit an annual run rate of $20 billion in revenue by the end of the year, to grow at 10 times its current pace.
ChatGPT sparked the AI craze, forcing big tech companies to spend billions of dollars to keep up. Altman has since taken OpenAI from a nonprofit dedicated to AI research to a $500 billion company that is trying to develop AI systems so powerful they could fundamentally alter society.
Altman, who briefly contemplated running for governor of California in 2017, has no shares in OpenAI and earns just $76,000 a year from the company. The majority of his net worth comes from his investments in major technology companies, including Stripe, Airbnb, and, more recently, a litany of startups looking to make money from the AI boom sparked by OpenAI.
Even at 20 years old, he was a force. In 2008, Paul Graham, who founded Y Combinator, summed up the then-23-year-old Altman: “You could parachute him to an island full of cannibals and come back in five years and he would be king.”
Altman, now 40, succeeded Graham as president of the startup accelerator in 2014.
Tuesday’s restructuring news, along with Altman’s comment that an initial public offering is the most likely path for OpenAI, suggests Altman is preparing to fund his bigger ambitions.
In pursuit of his goals, Altman has made some enemies, including billionaire Musk, co-founder of OpenAI and an early backer who left the company in 2018.
Musk has sued OpenAI, saying it has deviated from its nonprofit goals of developing AI for humanity. He has also criticized the Stargate project for being underfunded.
This spring, several former OpenAI employees supported Musk’s lawsuit, arguing that Altman could not be trusted to prioritize public safety over profits.
Two years ago, Altman was ousted from OpenAI after falling out with the board. He was reinstated a few days later.
That period will be the subject of a Hollywood movie, “Artificial,” which is scheduled to be released next year. Actor Andrew Garfield, who played Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin in “The Social Network,” will play Altman, IMDb says.
With information from Reuters.
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