OPENAI CEO Sam Altman called on world governments on Thursday to invest in AI infrastructure, as questions grow about whether the ChatGPT-maker, the world’s most valuable private company, can absorb artificial intelligence’s massive costs.
“What we do think might make sense is governments building (and owning) their own AI infrastructure, but then the upside of that should flow to the government as well,” Altman wrote in a long post on X, clarifying OpenAI’s position amid growing scrutiny of the company’s ambitious spending plans.
The company behind ChatGPT was facing scrutiny after its chief financial officer Sarah Friar told a business conference on Wednesday that the US government could help attract the enormous investment needed for AI computing and infrastructure by guaranteeing loans to pay for the buildout.
After fierce criticism, the executive later retracted the statement, saying her point was clumsily explained, which Altman reiterated in his own post.
“We do not have or want government guarantees for OpenAI datacenters,” Altman wrote.
“We believe that governments should not pick winners or losers, and that taxpayers should not bail out companies that make bad business decisions or otherwise lose in the market,” he added.
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“If we screw up and can’t fix it, we should fail, and other companies will continue on doing good work.”
The comments came as OpenAI faces questions about its financial trajectory.
OpenAI has become a highly pivotal company, with the AI race launched by the release of ChatGPT driving Wall Street to new records even as doubts grow about the broader health of the American economy.
Altman said the company expects to reach over US$20 billion in annualised revenue this year, a significant accomplishment for a startup, and is looking at infrastructure spending commitments of approximately US$1.4 trillion over the next eight years.
This includes a US$300 billion partnership with Oracle and a US$500 billion Stargate project with Oracle and SoftBank that was announced at the White House in January.
He projected that OpenAI revenue will grow to hundreds of billions of dollars by 2030, driven by as-yet-unreleased consumer devices, robotics, and AI-powered scientific discovery.
Given the strategic importance of the technology, Altman argued that building a “strategic national reserve of computing power” makes sense for governments, particularly as massive infrastructure projects take years to complete.
He cited severe compute constraints already forcing OpenAI and competitors to limit availability of their products and delay new features, warning that the risk of insufficient computing power outweighs the risk of overbuilding. AFP
