OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has revealed that the company expects to spend “trillions of dollars” on building the infrastructure needed to power artificial intelligence in the future.
He also admitted the challenge lies in raising that amount of money.
“You should expect OpenAI to spend trillions of dollars” on data center construction in the “not very distant future,” Altman told reporters on Thursday.
“And you should expect a bunch of economists to wring their hands and say, ‘This is so crazy, it’s so reckless, and whatever. And we’ll just be like, ‘You know what? Let us do our thing.’”
Altman suggested the company is working on a new financial instrument to fund the massive outlay, saying, “I suspect we can design a very interesting new kind of financial instrument for finance and compute that the world has not yet figured it out.”
In January, Altman joined SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and Oracle’s Larry Ellison at the White House to announce a $500 billion, four-year infrastructure project called Stargate. However, he now envisions far greater investments than Stargate covers.
Altman drew comparisons between the current AI investment frenzy and the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, noting that while some valuations are “insane” and “irrational,” the technology is real and transformative.
“Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited by AI? In my opinion, yes,” he said. “Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes.”
He admitted that some investors will “get burned,” but argued society as a whole will not regret large-scale spending on AI.
Part of OpenAI’s funding path may include going public, though Altman declined to provide a timeline. “I do think we have to go public someday, probably,” he said, while also admitting he may not be “well-suited” to run a public company.
Altman now views OpenAI as operating like four companies: a consumer technology business, a mega-scale infrastructure builder, a research lab, and a hub for new ventures including hardware. He also hinted at potential investments in brain-computer interface technology.
To help manage operations, OpenAI recently hired Fidji Simo, former Instacart CEO, to lead its applications business. “I can’t run four companies,” Altman remarked. “It’s an open question if I can run one.”
Altman also addressed the troubled launch of GPT-5, which drew mixed reactions from users frustrated with its writing style and the retirement of older models.
“I think we totally screwed up some things on the rollout,” Altman admitted. “We’ve learned a lesson about what it means to upgrade a product for hundreds of millions of people in one day, and the differences in the kinds of attachment people have with this product versus previous products.”
Despite the rocky debut, Altman said OpenAI remains committed to its ambitious vision, expecting that huge profits will eventually follow the unprecedented scale of investment.