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Sam Altman has said OpenAI should never become “too big to fail” and would not seek a government backstop for its debt, as the chief executive attempts to address concerns the start-up’s $1.4tn spending plans could shift massive risks from Silicon Valley investors to US taxpayers.
“If we screw up and can’t fix it, we should fail, and other companies will continue on doing good work and servicing customers. That’s how capitalism works and the ecosystem and economy would be fine,” Altman wrote on X on Thursday.
His lengthy post comes as the ChatGPT maker tried to walk back comments by its chief financial officer on Wednesday which suggested the $500bn start-up was calling for a federal backstop to help finance the development of artificial intelligence chips and infrastructure.
Sarah Friar, OpenAI’s CFO, said at a Wall Street Journal event on Wednesday the government could provide “the backstop, the guarantee that allows the financing to happen” alongside an “ecosystem of banks [and] private equity”.
OpenAI has committed to spend $1.4tn on computing power and equipment over the next eight years through a series of deals, many of which include circular financial terms that tie the start-up’s fortunes to large public tech companies including Nvidia, AMD and Oracle.
Some analysts are concerned that if OpenAI’s bet on AI fails to deliver enough revenue to meet these commitments, it could cascade into major losses for the US stock market and economy.
A government backstop would also tie the taxpayer into its complex financing. Altman wrote on X that “we do not have or want government guarantees for OpenAI datacenters” and the company is not “trying to become too big to fail”.
The company is also preparing to raise tens of billions of dollars of debt to help finance those costs, according to its executives.
OpenAI’s revenue would hit $20bn on an annualised basis by the end of this year, up from $12bn in the middle of the year, he said. Altman also revealed the ChatGPT maker expects to hit hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue by 2030.
The company’s massive computing needs meant it lost about $12bn in the past quarter, according to financial disclosures last week from Microsoft, its biggest investor. OpenAI declined to comment on the filings.
Altman said it would “make a lot of sense” for the US government to build its own “a strategic national reserve of computing power”, and loan guarantees would be appropriate in “supporting the build-out of semiconductor fabs in the US”.
Donald Trump’s administration has pushed to bring the most advanced chipmaking back to the US, wielding the threat of tariffs and promising exemptions for companies that build in the country.
In July, it unveiled a plan to boost US AI technology exports, floating the possibility of loans and loan guarantees as well as equity investments in the sector.
It has also thrown its support behind troubled Intel, taking a 10 per cent stake in the US chipmaker in August as the company attempts to establish itself as a serious manufacturing rival to Taiwan’s TSMC.
David Sacks, Trump’s AI tsar, on Thursday said: “There will be no federal bailout for AI. The US has at least five major frontier model companies. If one fails, others will take its place.”
